Higher Education
by rhyejess
Summary: This is a happy ending AU featuring Jack and Ennis in the higher education setting as the years go on. Technobabble may occur, but feel free to skip right by it.
1. Chapter 1

_Not my characters, and I make no money from them._

_I'm publishing this as an unbeta'd, less stylishly rigorous story. My hope is that I can keep up more frequent updates in this format, and hopefully not interfere with my writing or posting schedule of other storie_s.

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Chapter 1

St. Paul, Minnesota

October, 2006

Jack Twist looked up at the knock on his door. "Can ya give me a second?"

"Sure."

"You ain't goin' out with the colloquium speaker?"

"Nope." Ennis pressed his lips and made a face. "Condensed matter."

Jack nodded. "Alright, but my office hour don't end for another ten minutes."

Ennis nodded again, but walked in to Jack's small office and sat himself down. He knew as well as any professor that no students come to office hours for intro classes like Jack was teaching. They sat in comfortable silence, Jack answering e-mails, until noon rolled around, and Jack hopped up to grab his jacket. "Robin and Rich were talkin' about Smoky's earlier. That sound alright to you?"

"Yup," he nodded, and followed Jack down towards Robin's office, where all the Astro professors met for lunch every day. Well, all the Astro professors, plus two Astro post-docs, and one quiet gravitational theoretical physicist, whose admission to these Astro-only proceedings was granted by a gleaming platinum ring on his right hand.

Laramie, Wyoming

September, 1992

The TA grumped a bit, turning to the class. The topic was kinematics, and Jack was bored. He popped a piece of gum into his mouth and slumped back against the chair. Mostly he doodled his way through discussion section. The TA was a dry, quiet boy, who explained everything in ways that made it even harder to understand than the professor or the book. He didn't hardly ever raise his eyes to look at the class. He was just an undergrad, but some kind a genius, and knowin' that only made Jack less happy to have that lanky boy explainin' crap to him.

Leaving discussion, Jack caught up with Ron and Gayle. "You believe how boring that guy is?"

"Yeah," Gayle looked unhappy. "He might be smart, but he is _not_ ready to be teaching. He doesn't know how to explain anything."

Ron just shrugged. "We have to do the homework anyway. I don't see how it hurts."

"Well, it hurts my boredom to be stuck in that crappy-ass discussion with Mr. Mumbles."

Gayle giggled, and Ron looked away. Jack turned in time to see Mr. Mumbles himself stalk away. "Shit."

"Relax, it's not like he controls your grade."

Jack nodded. Gayle was right. Mr. Mumbles wasn't even their grader, just discussion section lecturer. He shrugged it off, and headed back to Ron's campus apartment to start work in earnest on the homework.

The first few weeks of classes proceeded no differently, though the homework got harder, and with it Jack's patience for his TA that simply couldn't help him with it, because the kid didn't speak English, just math, and Jack didn't care to know so much about differential equations.

Ennis, too, was growing frustrated. He didn't seem to be able to communicate with the class he was TAing. Most of the students were trying their hardest, but there was that one, Jack Twist, who always had a smart remark, who gazed at him with disdain, who purposely tried _not_ to understand what Ennis was saying. Jack was wearing out his welcome. Ennis didn't like to say so, but he was nervous as hell being up in front of a group of people like that, trying to teach them, like some kind of authority figure, and only about a year older than most of the people in the class. He was already scared shitless, and Jack's negativity was wearing on Ennis. He came home worried. He left for class worried. He sat in the kitchen of his tiny off-campus apartment worried. He didn't think TAing a class would take too much time or energy, but with Jack Twist and his way of pointing out anything Ennis did wrong so the class could snicker at it... well, it certainly wasn't worth the six dollars an hour he was making. He wasn't doing it for the money, though, and he knew it. It would look awful good on his CV come grad school admission time.

When midterm reports went out, Jack found out he was failing Introduction to Mechanics for Majors. Shit. Not failing, exactly. But he had a C, and it was really the same thing as far as your GPA is concerned. Jack'd always been a smart boy, sharp as a tack, with unique problem-solving skills, good interpersonal skills, and mighty fine talent with a trumpet, too, but his second semester in college was wearin' him down. First semester he'd gotten a D in Calculus II, and was retaking that now. He could not afford a C in physics. And shit, he knew what this meant. He'd have to see the professor.

Jack found Professor Pitt in his office on the fourth floor. Dr. Pitt was a researcher in gravitational field theory, which Jack thought was a scary enough name. He'd once opened a textbook on the subject, and if you thought the name was scary, you ought to see the math.

But Dr. Pitt wasn't interested in teaching his students any more than he was interested in flying them all to the moon. He mumbled something to Jack about not having the time to go over the exams with him, told him maybe he needed a tutor. Told him maybe he should see the TA.

Against his better judgment, and feeling pretty lost for alternatives, Jack approached Mr. Mumbles after discussion that Friday.

"Ennis? I, uh, I'm not doin' so well in this class."

"You don't say," The lanky kid mumbled. Ennis was growin' in a bit of facial hair, and had recently cut the hair on his head to a crew cut. He had a serious, if withdrawn, look about him.

Jack creased his brows at this bit of unexpected sarcasm from such a soft spoken person. "Hey now. It ain't funny."

Ennis stood and fixed Jack with a stare, spiraling into the crystal blue for just a second until he remembered that those eyes belonged to the worst smartypants physics major Ennis had ever met. "Yeah, well, you don't try very hard is all."

Jack shifted from foot to foot. He wondered what in hell gave Ennis the idea that he didn't try very hard. He was at home toiling over the damned homework for this class nearly every night. He spent probably three hours per question or something, and got together regularly with Ron an Gayle to try and work through them. He studied for every test. He was always in lecture and always took notes. He even came to the crappy discussion sections. Jack was finding out the hard way that a smart kid from a rural Wyoming high school wasn't the same as a smart kid in The University of Wyoming physics program. Kids here came from all over, and were smarter than him. He was trying his hardest all the time, and it just weren't good enough. But he didn't know how to say these things to Ennis in a way he would understand. That kid was such a genius, probably everything came to him naturally, and he didn't understand that a person could put good time and effort into something, and still get nothing to show for it. Instead, all he said was, "Don't know how to try goddamn harder," in a soft, soul-sore voice.

Ennis was stealing up a snappy retort, not his style, but thinking he had to put Jack in his place, when something in Jack's tone made him look in those blue eyes again, and what he saw this time wasn't cockiness at all, but some odd emotion lying at the brink of both hopelessness and hope, and Ennis knew in that instant he had to help this poor boy. He'd been there. There wasn't anything good about that kind of frustration. Squinting hard at Jack, he simply said, "You really are trying, ain't you?"

"Yeah." Jack sounded breathless.

"Yeah. Physics can be pretty hard sometimes." Ennis was looking down at his notebooks of notes.

Jack stared at Ennis then. This boy, he was a genius! He couldn't find physics hard in the way Jack found it hard. Jack was just about to go find a new major. Maybe English. He was good at communicatin'. Maybe he could try journalism? But in Ennis's quiet admission, some sort of secret that he wasn't a genius, had been down this path before, sprung something like hope in Jack.

Silence hung in the air between them, before Ennis squinted back up at Jack, his head cocked to one side. "You, uh, you want me to tutor you or somethin'?"

Jack licked his lips. "Yeah. I mean, that would be nice. I could pay ya."

"No need. I'm your TA."

"Yeah. Uh, thanks. An'... sorry I been such a dick?"

Jack felt an unusual warmth in his chest when he saw the corner of Ennis's mouth quirk up, though Ennis was lookin' down trying to hide that.

"Hey, you, uh, wanna go catch a drink, work out the arrangements."

"You ain't of drinkin' age, and neither am I."

Jack shrugged. "That's why we got fake Ids."

"I don't, uh, that's illegal."

Jack chuckled a couple times. "Whatever. Alright. How about some food. Taco Tower or somethin'?"

Ennis was thinking that he'd rather eat alone, like usual, but he hadn't gone grocery shopping, and Taco Tower was sounding pretty good. Still, the company of this overzealous kid probably wasn't going to be too good. Weighing the alternatives, Ennis shook his head. "I'm just gonna head on home."

"Aww, come on, you ain't no fun. Look, I stayed after, an' I missed my friends. Least you could do is chow with me."

Seeing that he was going to have to put up with a half hour of whining either way, Ennis opted for a half hour with a taco rather than a half hour standing in the classroom. "Well, alright." He set about to erasing the white board.

"Alright!" Jack said. "I just hate to eat alone. No one to talk to."

That was the idea, Ennis thought, but all he just said "ummhmm" and nodded.

They walked together across campus towards Taco Tower. Jack pulled out a cigarette. Ennis took one of his own, but asked Jack for a light.

"Say, you from around here?" Jack asked.

"Out by Sage."

"Oh. Alright. I'm from Lightning Flat, up on the Montana border. Most of the kids in the physics program are from the bigger cities. From Laramie, Gillette, Casper. How a rural boy like you get to be a big, smart physicist?"

"Could ask you the same," Ennis pointed out, inhaling long and slow on his cigarette.

"Yeah. Yeah, I guess. Well, my home wasn't exactly a place I wanted ta be growin' up, so I spent a lot of time at school."

Ennis nodded, but didn't say anything more about his own past. And so they walked in silence down to Taco Tower.

They sat at a small table down in one corner of the restaurant. Ennis got three bean tacos and inhaled them. Jack got steak and took his time, savoring the taste. Jack had also ordered a beer with his, but he hadn't even been carded. This was one of those college town places that thought business was more valuable than not being fined.

"You know, I really am tryin' physics."

Ennis nodded.

"I failed Calc II last semester, and I can't do that again. Probably didn't try in that class as hard as I should on account of the professor never collected the homework. That was my own stupid shit. But this semester I been workin' hard. I can't get no C in this class, Ennis."

Ennis was taken off balance by hearing his given name come out of that boy's mouth so effortlessly.

Jack sighed deep. "Even if the bad grades don't ruin my chance of ever gettin' inta grad school, my old man said that if I get anything less than a B again, he's gonna cut off my school money."

That caught Ennis's attention. "Well, uh, Jack? Physics is hard. Might not always make a B."

Jack heard what Ennis was sayin', sayin' he wasn't too smart. He guessed he knew that was true, but it still hurt some to hear it said so plain like that. "Yeah," was all Jack said. A minute passed before Jack went on. "Yeah, well, I at least gotta get some scholarships or somethin' lined up before that time, and I can't do that with C's. Besides, it don't bode too well for me to be getting C's an I ain't even past my first intro class."

Ennis nodded. This was true. He hated to say it, and would never say it to Jack, but he didn't think Jack was cut out to be a physicist. He just didn't have the raw know-how. Ennis knew what it felt like to feel that way, though, so maybe he was wrong about Jack and ought to help him.

"What about you? You got any scholarships?" Jack was eyeing him in such a way that gave Ennis the impression that it wasn't simply an academic question for Jack.

"A couple," was all Ennis said.

"Yeah?" Jack wasn't going to leave well enough alone.

"I, uh, got a scholarship from the state on account of my folks is dead."

The silence hammered hard for an instant, before Jack blew out a breath. "Shit, that's hard," was all he said, before he went staring into the oblivion behind Ennis.

They finished their food in silence, but Jack finally broached the topic. "So, uh, when you willin' ta tutor me."

"You free Wednesday afternoons?"

"Yeah, I get out a class at 1:50."

"How 'bout 2:00, then."

"Sure. My dorm has a study lounge hardly anybody ever uses, down in the basement. Not even really a lounge, just a little room. They call it 'the library', I guess 'cause it has a few books on the walls."

Ennis nodded.

"Anyone can get inta the basement, 'cause they have classes down there. I'm in Gilliam Hall. I'll meet you down there next Wednesday, at 2pm, then?"

Ennis nodded.

Jack stood up from the table. "Well, listen, it's been fun, but I got tickets to the basketball game, an' I gotta go."

Ennis nodded.

Jack hesitated, feelin' a strange sort of gratitude for Mr. Mumbles. He licked his lips again and smiled lightly. "Nice ta finally know you, Ennis del Mar."

Ennis looked up at Jack, catching blue eyes too earnest and too close for his own comfort, and looked away. "Yup."

"Alright." And Jack was gone, into the night, goin' with his friends to his basketball game. Ennis was alone again. Ennis usually liked alone, but suddenly he felt Jack's absence, and wished for that company for what might a been the first time in his life.


	2. Chapter 2

_Not my characters, and I make no money from them._

_Unbeta'd. If there are minor typos, I guess I really don't care. I do feel obligated, as a TA myself, to state that I in no way approve of TA/Student relationships. Also, note that Ennis has no control over Jack's grade, and that they're both undergraduates. I'm not sure how that makes it better, but somehow, it does. Though it's STILL WRONG. Because I'm a TA so I know._

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Chapter 2

Wednesday rolled around quickly, and Jack was sitting on the concrete patio that jutted out from his dorm basement smoking when he saw the familiar boy (shit, he really is just a boy like me, huh? Might act all smarty, but he's just, what, a year, two, older than me.) Two pm on the dot. Jack smiled bright, though he was thinkin' more 'bout what a shitty hour it would be. He hated doing physics homework. Always made him feel like a damn fool, and he hated it.

Ennis nodded his way, but was stern and focused, indicating they were going to get down to business. Jack led Ennis into the building and to the basement 'library', which Ennis thought was good. It was a small room, just big enough for the one round table. It had a wall of books, mostly science books, actually, and a small blackboard. The room was lit by one outside-facing door-sized window, and a chandelier with a warm glow. The place looked like it belonged at a fancier college, at Harvard or something, but Jack was living in a nice dorm-- one with a reputation for A/C and carpets and closets with doors.

They got down to business, making aquaintances with Halliday, Resnick, and Krane, and learnin' all about those men's views on the conservation of angular momentum. By the time Ennis had helped Jack through his entire assignment, three o'clock had come and gone. Jack thanked him and hurried off. Ennis walked alone back to his one-man domicile, and found himself wishing the professor would assign longer homeworks.

Three weeks passed in just this way. Jack's homework grades improved. But Ennis had never noticed before how lonely his life was. He went from home to class to teach to tutor to home, or home to class to lunch alone to class to home, with stops here and there to talk to Professor Pitt and get started on some field theory research. Ennis poured his heart and time into research and classes, trying not to feel the silence in his apartment. He'd never noticed it before, but it sure was loud, now.

Fridays Ennis got to see his only friend again. Jack had cooled his jets in discussion section, and regularly taken to abandoning his friends to drag Ennis to Taco Tower afterwards.

Jack for his part, had decided this quiet TA was a mystery he needed to solve. The boy seemed too sullen, and it bothered Jack to see someone so alone, Jack who had so many friends. Ennis, he learned, might be quiet, but was plenty opinionated, as long as one took the time to treat his opinions with respect. They talked about innocent stuff Friday evenings, about dogs and horses they'd owned, about how both thought they'd be ranchers when they grew up, about Professor Pitt and what an ass he was (Jack was surprised to find that Ennis agreed with him here).

When the second round of midterm exams rolled around, Jack asked Ennis for a couple extra hours-- if he could spare them. Ennis jumped at the chance to not be alone in his cold fucking apartment a minute longer than he had to be, screaming the silence he'd never noticed before, loud enough to beat his brain in now. That Friday after Taco Tower they walked back to Jack's dorm. They poured over physics until way too late on a Friday night to be doing physics, then they sat outside under the clear, sparkling stars. Jack got the bright idea to lay down on the hill his dorm was built into, and they chilled in the wintery grass, their breaths makin' smoke in the air to coil up and wrap together. That was the night Jack finally solved his puzzle.

They were layin' there, not doing or saying much of anything but enjoying the company all the same, when Jack sighed deep. "You know, was the stars made me want to do physics. Adding astronomy major, maybe drop physics." He exhaled again. "They just... they's always so hopeful, so bright. Even when you can't see them 'cause of the clouds or whatever, they're up there..."

The silence that beat on, then was quiet and lovely to Ennis's ears until Jack started again.

"You know what, growin' up, my life weren't too good, but I would head outside and look up at these stars, an' I felt like maybe there was somethin' out there for me. I started stayin' late at school then, more hours away from my old man. Eventually I realized I could head on off to college and get away from him permanent. It was either that or the rodeo, but there ain't no future in rodeoin'. You ever rodeo?"

Ennis shook his head. "Reckon was too busy on school, myself."

"Well, I gotta confess, I don't like school much. But anything's better than my old man. Can't please my old man no way."

"You like astronomy?"

Jack blew out a breath, then started, "Well, yeah. For one thing, astronomy's easier. Just more facts and less hard problems. But also, it's prettier. Know what I mean? I mean, there's one thing learning about a hypothetical massless frictionless pulley, but another thing alltogether studyin' a galaxy so far away you can't even see it." Jack's voice slowed as he said that, to a lyrical pace, like he was tellin' a story. "Two different things, Ennis. And one of 'em's worth more than the other."

Ennis nodded, reckoning he knew how Jack felt. "Like astronomy myself."

Jack's breath hitched. He felt about like Ennis had said something magical, like he said he could see the things Jack had always seen alone. Could see the twinkling stars as made a hope, could see those distant galaxies as made a dreams. "Yeah?"

"I been studyin' gravitational stuff under Dr. Pitt."

"No shit? That stuff scares me."

Ennis nodded again.

"So Ennis, how you get to be so smart, anyways?"

Ennis turned to look at Jack, saw friendly eyes, eyes that respected his opinions, and listened when he talked. He hadn't ever told anyone this story, but it seemed the right time ta do so.

"After my folks was gone, died in a car accident, my brother and sister didn't much want me. My sister married a businessman, had himself a good deal of money, so they sent me off to a boardin' school in Utah. Most of the people there thought I was stupid, 'cause I hadn't had too much good schoolin' up 'til then. Didn't like my roommates much, an' we weren't allowed ta be anywhere after dark 'cept the library, so I started studyin' full-time. I guess I really liked physics 'cause it felt like my own special world. Felt like I knew stuff 'bout the world no one else knew. To other people, it was a TV set, but to me it was like all those little electrons dancin', an' that were something special, I guess." He shrugged, and looked over to Jack, whose blues eyes were still pinned on him like he was of some interest. The gaze went on, drew in, got deep, had somethin' behind it, and Ennis was moved to break the silence somehow. "Whut?"

"Friend, that's more words than you spoke all semester."

"Hell, I think that's mor'n I spoke in a year." Ennis found his mouth turning up in a shadow mimic of Jack's friendly smile, backs damp and cold in the starry grass. Something moved him, and he kept goin'. "Guess my brother and sis did the best they could after my parents gone. They don't talk to me much anymore. Got their own lives, I guess. But my sis and her husband still put up some money for my college each year. That, plus the money I got from the state, more than enough. Your folks pay for your college?"

"They try. My mama thinks it's a fine endeavor. Think my dad just wants to keep me away. I got me a part-time job at the dining hall, but six dollars an hour don't pay for shit. Like I said, I rodeo some, in the summers, try an' win a pot or two to pay for college."

"My dad said rodeo riders is all fuck-ups."

Jack sat up, grin beaming in his mischevious way. "Hell they are." He kicked out a heel. It landed lightly on Ennis's leg, rocking him gently, before retreating. "You think I'm a fuck-up, Ennis?" Jack's grin said he was puttin' on.

"Sure are," Ennis chuckled.

Jack laughed heartily and flopped back down on the grass. What he said next he shouldn't a said. Shouldn't a come out of his mouth, but it did, damn Jack Twist. "For you, Ennis, I'd be any kind a fuck-up you wanted." Jack's eyes twinkled brighter than the stars in that cold dark.

Ennis smiled back over to him, but couldn't understand why he suddenly wanted to touch that boy. It didn't make any sense, but he reached out and gave Jack a fake punch to the shoulder, was rewarded by a beaming grin.

"You'll pass that exam real well, Jack. Know you will. You ain't any kind a fuck-up. Hell, most people wouldn'a found themselves a tutor even. Just let themselves fail."

"Well, I been down that road last semester, friend, and I ain't eager ta travel it again."

Ennis nodded.

"'Sides, I didn't find myself a tutor. I got something better. I made friends with my TA." Jack Twist winked over at Ennis then, and Ennis was forced to look away, so confused was he by the action. Was it wrong to be friends with a student you were teaching? Ennis didn't have any control over Jack's grade. He didn't think he was showin' Jack any kind of favoritism in class. Surely nothin' he was doing was wrong. Deciding he and Jack didn't do nothin' any TA might not a done with a student, he smiled back over. He noticed that Jack sure was lovely when he had stars reflecting in his eyes.

"Say, we studied hard. How 'bout that drink now?"

Ennis looked uncertain.

"Yeah, come on up to my room. It's too late on a Friday for me ta get a date or go out or anythin'. Guess you was my date, Ennis." Jack chuckled.

Ennis didn't find that too funny for some reason.

"It's fine, my roommate's gone home for the weekend. Does it every weekend. I always get the place to myself. Pretty good deal, helps out with the ladies." Jack winked at him.

That settled something in Ennis's stomach, and he nodded.

Jack's dorm room was pretty big for a dorm room. It had two desks, two closets (with doors), a set of bunk beds (Jack proudly proclaimed that he took tops always), and one soft denim bean bag in the middle of a large (carpeted!) floor space. A small TV/VCR set sat perched on a dorm fridge. Jack reached into the fridge and pulled out four beers. From what Ennis could see, it looked like they didn't keep much in the fridge besides Coke and beer. Ennis flopped onto the bean bag.

"You wanna watch somethin'?"

Ennis thought it might be crossin' a line to be illegally drinking with a student of his in that student's dorm room, not to mention watching movies together, but the thought of going back alone to his apartment that didn't even have a TV, on a Friday night when he could be drowsy over beer with Jack Twist... "Whatcha got?"

Jack pulled out a small box of tapes. "Uh... Goodfellas? Dances with Wolves? Hunt for Red October?"

Ennis picked Dances with Wolves. Because he knew it was a long movie.

Five (... six?) beers later, Ennis was surprised to look down and see that he was no longer alone on the bean bag. Both boys had their shoulders on the denim and their legs stretched across the carpeted floor. Their shoulders were touching just a bit. And no one could blame Ennis if he shifted just a little bit, because his right hip was hurting, dammit, and his shoulder pressed harder against Jack's. Something inside of his mind and body was screaming for more, but he was trying his damnedest to ignore it.

Jack, for his part, had become painfully aware of the boy brushing against him. He'd never felt anything like it, but he was so happy just to be lying here, he wasn't hardly even watching the movie. The beer made a golden haze over his world, and all that was left in it was one sweet, smart, lanky boy, and the hardening in his pants. He was aware of being terrified, of his heart pounding hard, of knowing he wanted to cross some lines that shouldn't never be crossed, some lines plenty of people had told him vile things about. But Jack couldn't hardly tell where those lines were over the roaring in his ears and flesh.

Jack would always think he made the first move, that Ennis's shoulder-press was a complete accident. But he couldn't hold it any more. Deciding he would rather get beat for tryin', then live with never tryin', he snaked a hand out and brushed the top if Ennis's (quivering!) thigh, real gentle with one index finger.

It was as if Ennis was a coin-operated ride, and Jack had slipped a quarter in. Ennis's hands flew at Jack, something giving way in them both, and button-fly jeans were being unbuttoned, a zipper fly screamin' its own song. They ended up with Ennis on top, hands finding their goals without losing time undressing. The boys twisted, ground against each other, and yelped with need. Somewhere in the middle of that, and maybe, they each thought, because of habit with girls (though Jack had far more experience on that account), their lips found each other's, and clung and ground with an even more fervent need than the rest of their bodies were feeling.

Almost as fast as it had started, Ennis grunted a "Jack, uh!", and Jack accompanied with his own "dammit, gonna, urmmm!", and it was over. Ennis seemed to freeze in time for an instant, then he jumped up as burned, zipped, and ran from the dorm room, sparing Jack one singular look Jack couldn't interpret on his way. Jack changed into pajamas, shut down the TV and climbed straight into bed. He didn't have a clue what had just happened, but he knew one thing, if it never happened again, his life would be the poorer for it.

The exam was on Monday. Jack showed up and took his seat in the classroom before he realized-- with horror and something sort of like delight, but brighter-burning-- that Professor Pitt hadn't shown up, and had sent a proctor instead. Ennis.

About ten minutes into the hour exam, Jack realized he'd spent the entire first ten minutes staring at Ennis. And not just Ennis, his crotch. He didn't know why. It wasn't like he hadn't seen, touched, held, pumped a dick before, but... His mouth was watering and he was wondering what it tasted like when he noticed Ennis was staring back, a thoroughly angry look on his face. _Ooops, caught_, Jack thought. He tried to finish the exam as best he could, but for some reason he couldn't remember any of his equations. Any except one. Ennis + beer + tatonka + bean beag way more fun than he'd ever had with a girl. But that didn't help with the exam. And Jack sure as hell was not going to look at Ennis again. Didn't want to seem like a pining girl in that angry gaze.

Jack turned in his exam after Ennis's sweet, mumbling, awkward tenor called time. He plopped it down without hardly lookin', and turned to leave the classroom as soon as possible.

"Uh, Jack, forgot your name."

Jack paused at the voice. _Sure seemed like you knew it Friday night_, Jack thought, a smile forming on his lips. Jack turned around, took back his exam, and leaned hard on the table. He didn't spare Ennis his own accusing glare when he said, "Yeah... Ennis?" He let the name hang in the air. "You got a pen? Mine's all packed up."

Ennis fumbled in his pocket. Jack used the excuse to look that way again, recognizing the jeans from this close vantage point. Jack took the pen, letting his finger touch Ennis's thumb. Ennis jerked back a bit. Jack didn't like that. Putting his name on his exam, he threw both it and the pen back on the low table Ennis was using to shield himself from the students. "Yeah, see ya around," Jack said, and spun from the room, feeling a sickness in his stomach he couldn't understand.


	3. Chapter 3

_Not my characters, and I make no money from them._

_Unbeta'd._

* * *

Chapter 3

That Wednesday afternoon found Jack sitting on a little brick wall outside the basement door to his dorm. He went through three cigarettes, huddled inside his jacket, his steamy exhalations mingling with the smoke. Two pm came and went, and nothing, before he gave up and wandered inside. He got the message. Ennis wasn't never comin' back. Jack didn't even spare the time to worry for his grade. It wasn't his grade he cared about no more.

Friday at discussion section, Dr. Pitt showed up, complete with a scowl, and explained how their TA wouldn't be TAing any more this semester 'cause he felt he'd gotten too close to one of the students. Jack did the rudest thing he done in his life at that point, and got up and left class right in front of the professor. He felt Dr. Pitt's eyes staring holes in the back of his jacket. Pitt wasn't a stupid man, and he must know what this meant, but Jack didn't hardly care. He didn't understand how, but he already felt like everything that'd ever mattered to him was a fake, some ghost of real life. He felt like maybe he'd found the real thing at last, but fucked it up just like everything else. Just like his daddy had always said.

Jack dined at Taco Tower that night, half expecting to see Ennis, but no such luck. He managed to catch up late with some friends of his at a bar, drunk himself under the table with his fake ID, and stumbled back to his door room to pass out alone, where just one week ago...

Ennis had never done anything harder than what he had to do that week, telling Dr. Pitt that he'd gotten close to a student and had to give up his job as TA. He never felt smaller than when Dr. Pitt glared at him, disappointment seeping from his mentor like an odor. Still, the professor thanked him for his candor, and said he'd take care of it. Ennis was just glad that Dr. Pitt hadn't found out that the student was a boy. There bein' only five girls in the class of over thirty, though, Ennis hated the shadow he cast over all of them in his professor's mind.

Wednesday was a hard day, an' Ennis took all his books to the library and studied some of his hardest research subjects until his brain throbbed and his eyes blurred and frustrations were caused by physics and not nothin' else. He didn't hardly spare a thought for where he wasn't and who might be waitin' for him there.

Friday night, Ennis sat in his one-man apartment and ate ramen with such a small appetite he didn't finish it until the noodles were cold and oily. He wished he'd had a beer, but he followed the soup with a generic-brand pop and tried not to think of where he'd been and what he'd been doing exactly one week ago.

Monday morning Ennis had a research meetin' with Dr. Pitt. Ennis felt his shame was written all over his face through the meetin', and maybe it were, but that was ok since Dr. Pitt was still lookin' disappointed, an' he might be appeased by shame. The meeting went alright, though. Ennis was happy to leave there, but it weren't gonna happen too quickly. Even as he was turning to leave, Dr. Pitt stopped him.

"Ennis, one more thing."

"Uh." Ennis turned towards his advisor.

"I, uh, wanted ta talk to you about a student."

Ennis ground his teeth together with nerves and a little touch of angry, though he wasn't sure who at.

"Sure thing," he managed to mumble.

"Jack Twist, you were tutoring him, right."

Ennis felt the color leave his face, and he hid his eyes.

"He walked out of discussion on Friday."

"That right?"

"Has done that before?"

"No sir."

Ennis hazarded a glance up at Dr. Pitt now, saw something like compassion mixing with disgust, and knew just like that he was caught. Ennis flushed bright red and ducked his head again.

"Well, he failed his exam."

Ennis didn't say anything, didn't trust his voice, and didn't think he could make it work anyway.

"He's been doing pretty well on his homeworks since you started tutoring him."

Ennis just focused on the worn brown carpet of Dr. Pitt's small office. It had seen better days, and Ennis could tell where the swinging open and closed of the door had worn it nearly bare.

"Ennis, you haven't been doing his homework for him, have you?"

The injustice of that sentence stung Ennis hard enough that he forgot his embarrassment, his head swinging up, and his eyes locking on Dr. Pitt's. "No sir, never. Jack ain't so smart as some students, but he work his ass off for what he done."

Dr. Pitt held his gaze. "Then how do you explain that he failed the exam?"

Ennis dropped his head again, murmured something too low for even himself to hear it.

"How's that?"

"Nothin'"

"Well, I think I might have to look into this. I'm pretty sure he's cheating on the homeworks."

"He ain't cheating." Ennis was watching where the old metal desk had had paint scratched up by some less-than-careful former owner.

"Well, the exam was pretty much straight from the homeworks, so he should have been able to do it."

Ennis mumbled again.

"What was that?"

Ennis cleared his throat. He couldn't believe he was about to say this, but it was already plain to him that Dr. Pitt had figured out what was between him and Jack. "He, uh, thought you'd be proctoring. Think he was distracted."

Dr. Pitt blew out a tense puff of air. "Ennis..." his voice was the very definition of frustration, "well, you really screwed Jack over."

Ennis was sure Dr. Pitt meant Jack's grade, but Ennis was caught between realizing he'd abandoned Jack emotionally and academically, and knowing he'd had to because screwing Jack Twist was exactly what he'd had in mind for over seven solid days.

"Alright. Whatever. He's to blame, too, I guess, so let's hope he can muddle through."

Ennis just stood there for a second. Dr. Pitt looked up, surprised. "Did you have a question or something? You're clear on your research, right?"

Realizing he was being chased from the office, Ennis didn't hesitate to turn tale and run, right on back to the life he'd had just hours before. But something was different. Someone knew about him and Jack. But Dr. Pitt had been more frustrated about Jack's grades than anything else, and probably about having to teach the discussion himself. Ennis thought maybe it would be alright.

Or it would be alright if maybe he could just see Jack again. Just needed to see Jack. Needed him like a sleepy man craves a bed.

By Wednesday morning, Ennis was sick with it. He stood outside the student union wearing a ratty old T-shirt, a ratty old hoodie pulled loosely over that. Ennis craved the burning cold because it took his mind off another burning. He just watched students. Watched boyfriends and girlfriends holding hands and giggling. Watched solo students looking self-concerned and serious. Others were reading the school newspaper or magazine. A couple were in ROTC and in uniforms. Many were rushing. So much life and thoughts going on around him, it made him dizzy. But he didn't need them to be dizzy, being dizzy with his own thoughts.

By two pm, he didn't even know what he was doing, but he was in the basement of Jack's dorm, no Jack in sight. Ennis couldn't get upstairs on his own, the housing part of the building being separated from the two or three classrooms in the basement. Still, tailgating into dorms was nothing new, and Ennis didn't even have to wait three minutes. He remembered the floor, he remembered the room, and before he knew it he was standing right outside of it. He pulled off his hood and simply stood at the door for a solid ten minutes before he mustered the most feeble-sounding knock he'd ever heard.

But no one answered.

He tried again, a little firmer this time, and the door swung open.

Jack's eyebrows knit together. Ennis made a noise, meant to be something like a "hey there," but coming out barely above a mumble, and literally pushed his way into the room. He just stood there for a moment, hands hooked into his jean pockets. He wanted to say something, apologize maybe for abandoning Jack to the whim of physics without a tutor, apologize maybe for coming all over his bean bag chair, or maybe apologize for not... for not being here in Jack's room again before now. But he couldn't make any of those apologies come.

"Hey there." It was like Jack sensed them anyway. "Ennis." Jack's voice was thick with worry. "Ennis?" Jack's hand was warm on Ennis's shoulder, and suddenly, with that touch, something inside snapped again, and he turned, moaning out all his apologies in a sigh of regret.

"Ennis." Jack's firm grip grew tighter, kept adjusting itself, pulling, until Jack had pulled Ennis's unshaved chin down onto his shoulder. Jack wrapped both arms around him, rubbing his back a little bit. The rubbing seemed to coax the courage out of where it'd coiled in Ennis's stomach, and he murmured ever so lightly an "I'm sorry" into Jack's shoulder.

But Jack said magic words to make everything better. Squeezing a bit tighter, he shushed, "It's alright, Ennis. Everythin's alright. I'm fine."

Ennis's groan now was less with guilt and much, much more with desire. Jack must have felt it, too, because he pulled Ennis's head back up from his shoulder, Jack's thumbs finding purchase on Ennis's jaw, and like gravity that Ennis was supposed to know so much about but still, it seemed, couldn't predict, Ennis's lips found Jack's. He was scared at first, this person being a boy and not a girl like it should a been, and maybe kissing a boy would be gross, but his lips found otherwise, found warm, found strong, found beauty in a way his eyes hadn't seen, and suddenly Ennis couldn't throw himself hard enough into the kiss. Soon Jack was gasping for air, Ennis grasping for clothes, just needing someplace to put his hands, to put his hands against Jack, against Jack. He slipped his fingers under Jack's untucked white button-down shirt, but found it wasn't enough. Jack must have felt it too, because he helped Ennis with the buttons, and when Ennis was running his hands around the muscled chest of a boy, he thought his heart might as well just explode right there, because it was like coming home, Oh God, it was heaven. And he needed more.

Jack sensed that too, and lowered them onto the bean bag, pressing the weight of Ennis down on top of himself. Ennis could feel Jack was shaking, too, this also being his first time kissing a boy. It made Ennis feel better to know how unalone he was in this, in this torment, in this fear, and in this other emotion he didn't know that seemed to swallow all those other ones in meaninglessness. It swallowed all meaning whole and left him with only want-need-bliss-want-need-bliss in an endless cycle.

When Jack's hands flew to his own fly, Ennis started shaking a little more. When Jack's hands finished there and went to Ennis's fly, the shaking turned into freezing solid. He just froze there, propped over Jack, half on a bean bag. Ennis fixed on Jack's eyes, wanting and needing so badly to tell Jack how afraid he was of what he was sure was about to happen, what he was sure he needed to happen.

He saw the fear echoed in Jack's eyes, and it warmed him all the way through. Ennis couldn't help himself, and he dove in for another blistering kiss, violent and at the same time tender.

And suddenly things were happening faster. Jack pulled his pants down, flipped over, panted, "You can do me Ennis. I ain't afraid." Ennis knew it for a lie, but he also knew why Jack was saying it.

Ennis pumped his hard dick a couple times to get ready. Shaking, but not shaking as much as Jack, he snaked his cock up the crack of Jack's ass, looking for the entrance. Shit, he hadn't even done this with a girl, let alone this. They hadn't covered nothin' like this in sex ed.

He found it, Jack still panting, whispering sweet "come on, come on"s beneath his breath.

Still, finding and entering turned out to be two different things, and, weighty with need, he still couldn't quite get where ne needed to be, so he spit in his hand to help the journey.

That did seem to help, and as he entered Jack the feelings his got, this being his first time ever, and with a boy no less, a shaky panting boy who couldn't draw an accurate space-time diagram to save his life, Ennis thought he might just explode there. His Jack, who was always so happy, so cheerful, going with his friends to basketball games, never taking science as seriously as really he should, because he wanted to be doing other things, the boy who'd drug him to Taco Tower and listened to him about his childhood, about his parents, this boy who told him about his daddy and about the stars, told Ennis about the stars in a way no textbook could have ever done.

Ennis floated back to earth. He hadn't moved yet, just hovering inside Jack like one might stand at the gate of heaven and beg to be found worthy to proceed. Jack was swearing a little under his breath, breathing hard, muttering, "just give me a second, a second, alright, just, ok. Ok. Just let me."

And with those words, words Ennis would always, always treasure for a reason he couldn't understand-- just let me-- Jack slowly slipped back onto him, breathing hard, back rising and falling underneath Ennis's weight. Entrance. Not only was Jack letting Ennis into heaven, he was taking him there.

A shudder that no longer sounded like pain, but like pleasure, finally shushed past Jack's lips, and Ennis began to move, to rock and pull, anything that felt good. Jack had snaked a hand around to grasp one of Ennis's hips, holding them tight together, until they both finished the deed, Jack swearing a little. Ennis didn't even pull out, just collapsed somewhat off-center on top of Jack on top of that bean bag and fell asleep.

Jack was ushered back to life by a familiar sound, though it took a full second for him to place it. A second he soon realized he didn't have. The sound was a rattle-- the rattle of his roommate's keys in door. Jack didn't remember locking it, but he mostly did by instinct, some thefts having happened in the building this year, one even while someone was asleep in their unlocked room.

"Shit." He cursed and lept to his feet, seeing that the sky was the color of twilight, squirming out from under Ennis and trying to pull up his jeans simultaneously. Not quickly enough. The door swung open and Brett was talking almost before he'd opened the door. Stuff went fast from there.

"Jack! Did you---"

"Fuck, Ennis, get up."

"Hnh."

"Who the hell? Jack?"

"Uh."

Ennis was stumbling up, catching onto the situation, if the red colored patches on his cheeks were any indication, and fumbling with his fly. Jack was likewise fumbling with his fly. Seemed the whole conversation could wait three seconds for them to be decent.

Brett was staring at the bean bag like he was going to vomit, and looking a little pale to boot.

"Brett. This Ennis. My TA. In physics." Jack was still a little out of breath.

"Jack, you--- oh my God, I---" he spun on his heels then, and called as he was heading down the hallway, "fuck you!"

_That was the the general idea,_ Jack thought, _only it wasn't you, but Ennis here. My TA. Shit._

"Fuck," spat Ennis.

Jack could see Ennis was upset, but somehow he simply couldn't help but giggle.

"What's so funny, huh? We done that! And he caught us! And now he'll tell people for sure, an' we ain't... this ain't."

"Calm down, Ennis. Brett can be an ass sometimes, but he won't tell anyone nothin' like this. That he been roomin' with a fairy? Not likely." He laughed again.

But Jack immediately sobered when he caught Ennis's glance again. Ennis wasn't foolin' and he wasn't joking, he was threatening when he said it. "You a fairy, Jack?"

Jack's head spun. "Huh? I, uh."

"Cause I sure as hell ain't gay or none a that queer shit."

_Huh? Alright._ "Well... no. I mean, I'm not gay. Least I don't think so. I just..."

"Yeah."

"Yeah..." Jack said it with wonder, not understanding the magnitude of what had just happened, and knowing he and Ennis were both thinking about just that.

"Well, maybe that's the only time we do that. This is crazy."

Jack chuckled, knowing there simply had to be another, and another, and... _whoa there cowboy._

"You sure he ain't gonna tell?"

"Well, I doubt he wants to room with me no more, but no, he'll make up some other excuse."

They stood in silence for a minute, the sheer magnitude of what they'd just done together, and not just the sex, but the kiss, oh God, the kiss, shimmering untenable on some foreign horizon. It would have to be dealt with some day, but Jack thought right now there were plenty of more urgent matters.

Giving Ennis a tentatively hopeful smile, Jack asked, "Say, you up for Taco Tower?"


	4. Chapter 4

_Not my characters, and I make no money from them.  
_

_Unbeta'd._

* * *

Chapter 4

It was Jack's idea. While Ennis was still coping with the awkward aftermath of what had happened that afternoon, he was vulnerable to Jack's power of suggestion, and that's how come he end up splitting a taco platter with Jack. Ennis found he preferred beef to bean after all.

Jack, it seemed, was energized. Ennis felt like maybe he was seeing that boy for the first time. Every two minutes or so, his mind would run back to the texture of the hair in Jack's crack, or the color of his dick, or the way he felt inside. And Ennis would find he didn't have a single word he trusted on his lips to say to Jack. But that was fine becauise Jack seemed to have more than enough for both of them.

Focusing back on Jack, Ennis noticed he was talking about the basketball season still just ramping up, about the bowl games from the football season. That boy sure did like his sports, Ennis reflected. Very manly of him, Ennis approved, though he wasn't one for much sports himself. Jack was excited. It was his first fall semester in college, as apparently he'd been admitted in the spring semester the year before. When Ennis finally loosed his tongue enough to ask Jack why he hadn't been in fall admissions, Jack just shrugged him off. Whatever it was, Jack didn't want to talk about it.

By the time they'd finished the tacos, they'd torqued things back to where they'd been enough that it seemed like they hadn't had sex. They were still just two boys, a tutor and a student, friends, yeah, but nothing more. Except sometimes Ennis would catch Jack looking at him from deep eyes that said more, or Jack would catch Ennis turning red for no good reason. It was still there between them, but a secret even from each other, somehow. Ennis's private shame about fucking a boy still burned too strongly to admit it to anyone, even the person he shared the shame with. At least he hoped he shared the shame. He'd hate to think he was alone in this quiet agony.

Standing outside the little strip-mall restaurant, Jack lit up a smoke. Neither moved or spoke, just breathed in cool night air. Ennis was terrified of what was going to happen next. Either him and Jack would spend the rest of the evening together, or they wouldn't, and either outcome was damned near unbearable to him.

"You live around here?" Jack asked, still peering off towards the bustling commercial roadway running near the campus.

"Uh, yeah, 'bout two blocks south."

"Yeah?" Jack peered south. "Don't tell me you live in Laramie Heights."

"Yup."

"Shit, that place is a funk-hole, or so I hear."

"Well it might not be no fancy dorm, but I make due."

Jack nodded, threw his cigarette on the ground. Ennis couldn't see it then, but ideas were forming behind Jack's eyes. No way his roommate was going to stick around now. He'd have an empty bunk at least for the rest of the semester. Jack unconsciously licked his lips.

Jack really didn't want the evening to end, but he was sure he'd somehow pushed Ennis too far tonight. Not wanting to send that boy running like last time, Jack simply nodded once and said, "I'm gonna head on back ta my dorm, then."

Ennis nodded too. "See ya 'round I guess."

"Sure thing." And they parted ways.

Friday Jack sat though discussion with a much cooler temper. Turning to leave afterwards, the professor quietly called him over. Jack was concerned about what Pitt would say.

"Jack, you didn't do too well on the last exam. Do you need another tutor?"

Jack wanted to laugh. He really did. But he managed to contain himself. "No, uh, I got one."

"Oh you did? Good. I was hoping this wouldn't ruin your semester. I ought to report something, but I guess I won't." His brow furrowed.

Jack didn't know who he was supposed to report what to, but all he said was, "Yeah, Ennis is still tutorin' me." He didn't know why he decided ta tell Pitt that, but maybe it was just for the look on his face.

Which was, he had to admit, pretty priceless. The older man looked like he'd been tripped completely. "Uh. Ok. I... I don't see a problem with that."

"Thanks," Jack said, and he left the room.

It was Friday, and though it was early in the afternoon and not hardly evening, Jack wasn't too surprised to find Ennis waiting outside in the hallway. Jack nodded, and they walked outside.

"You got plans tonight?" Ennis asked.

"I got basketball tickets."

"Oh. Ok."

"I got an extra if you want ta come."

"Uh, sure."

"Cool. I was gonna head back to the dorm to do laundry. Wanna meet for dinner? Say, dining hall, five thirty?"

Ennis nodded, and they parted, but now with the sweet satisfaction of knowing they'd see each other soon.

The time passed pretty much that way. They did guy stuff, basketball games and food, maybe fucking in the back of Ennis's truck in the unlit parking lot late at night after, cold pushing in from all sides, but they managed. Watched some NFL games on TV, though neither was into the NFL, and always at Ennis's apartment, not at Jack's dorm. Fucked there, too, and sometimes handjobs in timeouts.

Jack's roommate was indeed getting out of his room, or tryin', so Jack had a few meetings with the RA he had to attend. Brett maintained that he'd caught Jack having sex on his beanbag chair, without nothin' hanging on the door to indicate he'd be welcomed home to such a sight. Brett came off as a prude, maybe, but the RA said it was too late in the semester to rearrange rooms, so Brett packed his things and moved in with his girlfriend for the rest of the semester. Jack paid him $25 for the beanbag chair, knowin' that'd smooth the way a little bit.

Tutoring continued too. Ennis didn't never touch him while tutoring, though he'd moved his chair right up next to Jack's to lean over the physics book. One such Wednesday as December was starting an' Jack was conscious of fall semester comin' to a close, Jack mentioned feather-light that Brett was de facto vanished. "Ennis, I got an extra bed, extra desk, extra closet. You should come live on campus, decent housing."

"Don't think that's such a good idea?"

"Well I do."

"What if he comes back."

"I told ya, he moved out."

"Still has a key, though."

"An' trust me, he wouldn't use it without knockin'."

Ennis blushed. "I said no. Can we just leave it be."

"Alright." Jack couldn't shake a feeling of disorder, like they were on some journey, and the sleepin' arrangements hadn't even been discussed nearly a month in. Jack knew he been accused of procrastinatin' a time or two, but now he was ready to go.

Just the followin' Wednesday, though, Jack was puzzlin' over a physics problem.

"Come on, now, you just gotta keep track of what frame your in."

"Shit. This doesn't make no sense."

"You gotta calm down. Now look, the observer in the S prime frame sees it doesn't conserve energy. You see?"

"No, I DO NOT fucking see! This is shit! When the hell am I goin' a be traveling at nearly the speed a light ta care about this shit!?"

"Well, now, some things move that fast."

"Fuck you."

"Just think a all those little particles out in space a yours."

"Fuck you."

"Jack." Ennis laid a soothing palm against Jack's back. "You like space, right? What 'bout sometimes in space a particle goes a lot further than it should 'cause a goin' so fast?"

Jack was calming under the palm, focusing on Ennis's words, and not in the frame of S prime, or physics, or any of that shit. Was Ennis still talkin' 'bout physics? Course he was. He was talkin' 'bout that problem the professor said in class, 'bout the free neutron. 'Bout a free neutron decaying. Decaying. But it gets closer to the center a the galaxy because it was goin' near the speed a light.

"Alright," Jack said, "let's move on in with S prime if that's what you wanna do." It was the first time Ennis touched him while tutoring, and Jack thought maybe if he managed to go fast enough, he could get there before he decayed. But he didn't want to go fast enough to scare Ennis, so he sat on that for a little while.

Turns out he didn't need to sit on it for too long. Friday afternoon Ennis showed up at his place with a duffel bag, hat in hand again.

"Ennis, what in hell are you doin' here?"

"Heat's out in my buildin'. If your offer still stands, was hopin' I could bunk up here for a few days?"

Jack motioned him in and made Ennis the bottom bunk with his secondary pair a sheets. "Alright," he muttered when he was done, placing his hands on his hips. "Alright. Well..."

It was an awkward moment, but it passed quickly, as Ennis took him right there on Brett's bottom bunk.

The semester was finishin' only three weeks later, an' though Ennis's apartment really had had a heat problem, it had been fixed within twenty four hours, an' Ennis wa still living with Jack. They saw sight nor sound of Brett, so Ennis didn't spook, and bein' a boy's floor, no one noticed. Jack even told people he got a new roommate, but they were havin' problems with his key, and the boys got to know the quiet guy who came and went with Jack a lot. They let him tailgate into the building without any problems. Living on campus, Ennis even started to improve in his own classes and work more on research. He got to see Jack plenty, and thought maybe he'd be sick of his new friend by now, but in fact his desire to be around Jack only growed, and soon they were meetin' for lunches, he was stealing food through Jack's meal plan, and they actually managed to settle in at night and do their homework. They shared Jack's computer, though they slept in separate beds after the sex was done. It felt better somehow that way, in case someone come in the middle of the night, Ennis told himself. But also it was pretty gay to sleep holdin' another man. Was ok to do during the day 'long as you were watchin' sports or Seinfeld.

But the end of the semester came too quickly, and one day Jack had taken his finals and was packin' up his stuff to head back home with the folks for Christmas. In the spring he'd have a new roommate and this blissful time would be all over, and Ennis would be cold again, and alone, alone, because Jack would be livin' with someone else.


	5. Chapter 5

_Not my characters, and I make no money from them.  
_

_Unbeta'd. I didn't include Fort Worth for any reason other than it's where the Mountain West conference has it's bowl game closest to Christmas, but that was a happy coincidence considering fandom connotations. I also didn't look up which bowl Wyoming went to in 1995. I took liberties. _

* * *

Chapter 5  
They cleaned the dorm room together and in silence. Jack was whistling softly to himself, but Ennis couldn't understand why. Nothing pleasant was happening here.

"So, uh, when your folks comin' a pick you up."

Jack froze in the middle of 409-ing the particle-board desks. "I, uh." Jack didn't do anything for a minute, but then he turned around looking pretty damn embarrassed.

"What?"

"I signed up for winterterm. Told my folks I couldn't come home for Christmas on account of..." He reached behind him, fingerin' a pocket. "Well, I was... I was hoping I could stay with you through winterterm?"

"Christ, Jack, when was you gonna tell me?"

He shrugged. "I know you're gonna say no. So I waited until your choice was ta put me out on the street."

"Nooo way. Can't work. I only got a one bedroom!"

"Jesus, Ennis, I only got _one room_ total an you been livin' with me!"

"It ain't the same!"

"Oh, and why not?"

"This is a dorm."

"Ennis! Probably half the guys in your building, probably more, are students bunking together to save money."

"But they got more bedrooms."

"You bet. They've got, what, two bedrooms, an' eight people, or something ridiculous? No fleets of scholarships hankerin' after us normal folk." Jack added the last almost beneath his breath.

"Jack, I dunno."

"Look, I don't care," Jack went back to scrubbing then, and Ennis could see some papers of some sort sticking out of the pocket he had fingered. "I'd rather live on the street in Wyoming in the winter than go back to my old man anyways."

"Christ. Fuck."

"I'll be fine. Gotta be some way them homeless people do it, right?"

"Shit."

"And for a full weekend, I'm gonna be away, got a hotel an' everything, so that's alright."

Ennis was sufficiently distracted. "What are you talking about?"

"Just this." Jack stopped scrubbing, turned back around, and handed those back-pocket papers over to Ennis. "Merry Christmas," he mumbled, before starting in on the windows.

It took Ennis a moment to realize what he was looking at. Two tickets. "Wyoming versus Southern Methodist," they said. "Fort Worth," they said. "What's this."

Jack didn't turn from the window. "Bowl game tickets."

"What the fuck."

"We're playing Southern Methodist in Fort Worth fucking Texas, December 23rd an eight pm."

"I can read the ticket."

"Then why'd you ask?"

"Well, for starters, how in hell we gonna get there?"

Jack stopped now to face Ennis. It was almost a fight. Ennis wasn't sure who he wanted to fight, Jack for bein' some sort of fool, maybe even a romantic kind, or himself, for wantin' to go on this thing with Jack so badly, for feelin' so good inside 'bout gettin' such a present. Never been out a Wyoming, and here was a ticket to a game in Texas.

"Student bus. Already got us spots. Leaves the union tomorrow at seven am sharp."

"Well, well what about rooms?"

"Got one at the Econo-lodge where everyone from the student bus is stayin."

"I know you don't have the money for a damn hotel room."

"It's the Econo-lodge, not the Hilton. Besides, we're sharin' a room."

"You and me?"

"Yeah, an', an' a couple other guys?"

"What?"

"Jesus, we're all just students. Need a save money."

"But what if I... what if you, what if you--"

"Well I certainly ain't interested in nothin' related to no other guys, behind their back or in front of their face, so whatever you implying, I'm not even gonna answer that."

Ennis locked eyes with Jack for a moment, both men daring the other to back down, but Jack, as usual, had thought of everything. "Alright." Ennis said. "You gonna be back in time for your semester?"

Jack smiled more than big enough to make the entire trip maybe worthwhile. "You're damn right I will."

"What you takin'?"

"Film."

"Film? I thought you said you weren't gay."

Jack laughed. See, lookit, Ennis could make jokes. "I figure three credits for sitting in a room watching movies is worth it. And I need a fine arts credit."

"Yup," Ennis nodded. "Took band myself, first semester here."

"That so?" Jack hadn't known Ennis even played an instrument, an' was pleasantly surprised. There were more depths to plumb still, forever with any luck, in the warm, dark abyss that was Ennis del Mar. "What do you play?"

"Trombone."

"Hmm." The picture of Ennis's large hands wringin' deep sounds from a slide trombone, shiny in the lights of a concert hall, havin' ta work with other people, even, in a way that wasn't his style... it was a sexy image. "You don't strike me as a band type."

Ennis shook his head. "Too much time."

"Not like physics."

Ennis smiled at that. Physics took more fuckin' time out of either of their days than they deserved to lose.

For a moment Jack thought they might kiss, but instead the mutual stare of affection was broken by Ennis, who scooped up his bag. "Well, you better pack up and get going."

"Yeah, why's that?"

"Our place ain't no kind a short walk from here. And we got a lot ta do before Fort Worth, an' a early morning. Trust you ta not tell me I'm gonna be somewhere 'til I'm almost there."

_Our place._ It hadn't been missed by Jack. "Yeah," was all he said, but he felt like he was flying through the sky so high he didn't ever need to take an astronomy class again. Because Ennis was going to show him every star. Just needed some help now and again.

Jack was barely awake for the cold-ass morning walk across campus with his silent theoretician. He was huddled inside a coat, his backpack overstuffed and hanging from both shoulders for once by virtue of its excessive weight. It hadn't been easy to pack, Texas being a good bit warmer than Wyoming about now, but the real annoyance was that big thick winter coat would just be something big to carry around in a few hours. Ennis had drawn the line at a thick coat and was wearing layers of flannel and sweatshirt. Jack thought maybe Ennis had been pretty smart about that, but the truth was, a much as he wished it weren't so, Jack didn't have too much clothes to his name. He had to make due with what he had, and that didn't include any flannels.

They loaded on the coach bus with about thirty five other sleepy college students, three quarters guys. Thanks to Ennis's early-ass self, they managed to get seats right next to each other, bein' some a the first people on the bus.

Ennis sat down by the window, a physics book clamped in one hand. _Thermal Physics_ Jack read on the title.

"I want the window."

Ennis gave him that 'what are you on now?' look.

"I said I want the window."

"What the fuck."

"Come on."

Jack stood, made Ennis leave his seat, and they switched places. Jack nestled his head against the window and drifted to sleep, while Ennis was settling in to read.

Jack woke up some time later. Ennis was sound asleep and slumped onto his shoulder of all things. He thought he ought to be decent an' move Ennis's head. Knew that if Ennis woke up and found he did that in public, he'd flip. But Jack couldn't help himself. He pretended to be asleep for another hour, until Ennis woke up with a start. Jack slitting an eye open in time ta see that man blush burning red, and then didn't even pretend to wake up, just sat up straight and laughed. It earned him glare, but he knew it would, an' maybe that's why he did it.

Jack pulled his walkman out of the backpack that was crammed between his legs now, and settled back to listen to his favorite bands on tape.

"What you got there, huh?" Ennis was poking at the little collection of tapes in Jack's lap. Jack'd been lazily looking out the window, enjoying the scenery flatting out before his eyes. He liked to keep a look out for moraines. Geology was always interesting to him, too, to think this Earth had been around for a long time and would continue to be around after his silly problems faded from the Earth.

"Huh?" Jack took off his headphones, stopping the tape on the bright yellow Walkman.

"What you got here?"

"Oh, this just, just my favorite bands. You heard all these already. These are the same ones I played 'round the dorm. You know, Nirvana and stuff."

"Oh."

Jack watched Ennis for a second-- then figured it out. Ennis was lonely, bored, looking for conversation. His physics book was closed. For once, he wanted a person to talk to and not physics. _Not any person, me._

Jack lowered his voice. "Hey I got an idea. We got a long trip and all this time ta kill. Maybe we get to know more about each other."

"Huh?"

"You know, personal stuff."

"But there's people around." Ennis voice was hushed.

Jack shrugged. "Most of them asleep, can't hear us anyway. We're whispering. They got headphones." To demonstrate, Jack leaned forward to wards the boy in the seat in front of them, who was not asleep, but listening to music. "Hey, bud. Buddy. Hey."

Nothing.

"See?" Jack shrugged. "Here, I'll go first. What do you want to know?"

Ennis seemed to think just conversation was something mischievous from the look on his face. "Why didn't you tell me 'bout your winter course? Really?"

"I knew you didn't want me in your apartment. But I can't go back to the old man."

"Why not?"

"Hey, ain't it my turn?" Jack's humor was forced now.

"Alright."

"How come you so afraid a this thing?"

Ennis shook his head. He wasn't going to answer. Shit.

"Alright, I'll go again. You know how I told you no way to please my old man? Well, not even livin' and breathin' good enough for him. He likes to beat the shit out a me for no reason. Last time I seen him he came at me with a goddamn baseball bat, swear to God. Not goin' back there ever if I can help it. Least he never hurt my ma, or else I'd a killed him." Jack's voice was soft with deep truths shared. Nothing he'd ever told anyone before. It took him a moment to get up the courage to look at Ennis again.

Ennis's eyes had grown soft. He was watching Jack's hands. Ennis gave a furtive glance around, and seeing whatever he was looking for, or not seeing it, he tapped Jack's knee and said so low Jack almost didn't hear it, not even a whisper, but just comin' out like breathin', "Sumbitch kill 'im with my own two hands he touch you 'gain darlin"

Jack didn't need, and wasn't asking for, protection, but hearing an endearment on the sweet scent of Ennis's breath, smelling like the coffee they'd shared that morning at Ennis's-- their-- apartment, well, Jack got hard as magnetohydrodynamics at that, and wished to God he could kiss Ennis into oblivion right in the seat. His eyes even flicked back to the bathroom stall at the back of the coach before he understood that there was no way they'd both be in there without being noticed-- and heard, for sure-- and that the next time he and Ennis were likely to be alone together was after they got back from Texas. Bullshit on that. Ennis must've caught the drift of his gaze, because he was smilin' a shy smile and sporting his own piece of graduate-level physics under partial cover of Kittel and Kroemer.

And it was their apartment now. They'd talked it out last night. Jack was going to stay, pay the utilities and some groceries 'cause he couldn't afford rent (and because he cranked up the thermostat a lot higher than Ennis kept it). He'd tell his mama he found a real ideal housing situation. He was there for good an' permanent. He didn't know how he'd managed to convince Ennis it would be alright, and he guessed he wasn't done with the convincing, but that didn't matter. What mattered was that he was only a freshman in college. That was years of living with Ennis. Years and years. And Jack didn't see any end in sight, the long road to Texas and back again to Wyoming, and wherever else it might lead, but Ennis was next to him on the road, so it was alright.


	6. Chapter 6

_Not my characters, and I make no money from them._

_Unbeta'd._

* * *

Chapter 6

By the time they were stoppin' at a McDonald's in the middle of bumfuck nowheres, U.S.A., some of the boys had woken up and they were all talking to each other. Jack made fast friends with the boy in the seat behind them, Harold, who was hispanic, a freshman, and in the marching band playing third cornet. Ennis even talked to him, 'bout how the band director was doin'. Band director sounded like an ass to Jack, listening to them talk. Harold's seatmate was also his roommate, just like Jack and Ennis, 'cause that was how they introduced themselves. The seatmate was an engineering major name a P.J. Real average. Harold was a Criminal Justice major and wanted ta be a cop. Jack and P.J. talked about how sucky-hard physics was while Ennis and Harold talked band. The four ate lunch together too. Come to decide they four would room together down in Texas. Weren't no real assignments, just a certain number of reserved rooms, so that was fine.

That first night they got to the hotel in the early morning, and the whole bus full a people were dragging. They pulled their stuff into their room. "I'll take the floor," P.J. announced. If they was girls, Jack knew, they mighta shared beds, but knowin' well the ways of boys, and better yet the ways of him n' Ennis, Jack spoke up with a "me too." It earned him a look from Ennis, but Jack couldn't decide if it was disappointment, relief, or... jealousy? What the fuck.

Ennis gave Jack half the pillows and the bedspread, and hitting the floor Jack was out like a light in minutes.

When Jack woke up, it was well into the day. Game day already because this was a game trip and not really a vacation.

No one was in the room at all. Leaving, Jack found Ennis just standing out there, smoking. "Hey," Ennis mumbled.

"Where'd P.J. and Harold."

"They took a taxi downtown with some other guys to sightsee."

"Oh. You wanna do that?"

"Nope."

Jack was back inside the room moments later, learning all about what Ennis wanted to do. Ennis started real slow, pullin' Jack inside to hug him, stroke his cheek, kiss him. Jack kept his eyes fixed on Ennis's the whole time, imagining that this was a tank-you for trip. Then suddenly Ennis stripped Jack's pants, kneeled in front of him, an' showed Jack just _exactly_ what he wanted. Jack was on an edge when Ennis moved the party to the bed, where Ennis did what he didn't do often (and Jack never much wanted to do anyway, the angles being too awkward) and took Jack face to face. Jack's eyes never left Ennis's face, even when Ennis had to squeeze his shut. Jack came first, but they kept moving, dancing to music only they heard, the only slow dance they would ever get, and it wasn't going all too slow. Ennis's gasping finally stilled, before it fell into sweet kisses, kissing away that baseball bat, saying, 'you're precious' in a language without words, and Jack felt precious then. He felt better about himself than he had in maybe ever. Good to know that even though he was a stupid fuck with bad grades, an attitude problem, an no place to call home, and even gay now, he could make this one man so happy. And maybe he did have a place to call home.

They woke again around 1:30pm. Jack woke first, hungry and a half. He kicked Ennis up out of the bed, barely sparing a thought for how lucky they'd been that Harry and P.J. hadn't returned to find them naked and cradling each other, spent, on the bed. Jack showered first, then Ennis. Afterwards, both dresses in Wyoming shirts in anticipation of the night's game.

They wandered down the street from the hotel to find a place to eat. Settled on a diner-type place that had a sign that said they specialized in pies. They shared cigarettes and pumpkin pie in the smoking section, then wandered around the local area. There was a strip mall with a Hallmark, an' Jack picked up a Christmas cards for his mom, turnin' back for a second one after a moment's hesitation. Ennis must a saw though, because the orphan boy was scanning the card section. Ennis silently picked out one of his own. They both paid and left, neither talkin' about it.

By the time they got back, the pre-game buzz was one. Soon they were all in the bus headed for the stadium. The game went alright. First quarter they were down by three at the end. Second quarter they got a touchdown off a punt return, an Jack managed to kick his cup of soda over onto the boy in front a him. Wyoming had a pretty mediocre quarterback, but their kicker was to die for, good as shit and NFL material for sure, though still yet a junior. Third quarter Southern Baptist scored twice, but missed an extra point, leaving the score sixteen to seven going into the fourth. But Wyoming had a deep bench, 'cause Southern Baptists's defense was losing steam, but the Wyoming offense wasn't, and they ended the game with a win, twenty-one to sixteen. Jack was so glad, 'cause it would a sucked to come all this way just to watch your team lose.

As they were leaving the stadium, J.P. whispered in Jack's ear about a party goin' down for Wyoming folks. Jack guessed Ennis didn't much like parties, preferring ta be alone, but he thought he'd mention it.

"J.P. says some sort a shindig goin' down, just a walk from here. Wanna go?"

"Huh? How we gonna get back if we miss the bus?"

"Take a cab."

"You know I don't like them parties."

"I know."

"You goin'?"

"I ain't decided."

"Well I am not."

Jack nodded and followed Ennis back to the bus. He had sort of wanted to go, this being a once in a lifetime deal, but he knew he'd just mope around and ruin it for himself and maybe other people, too. He could mope just as well back at the hotel.

But turned out he was wrong, because the four boys sharing the next room over, Terry, Bill, Dave, and Chaz, had spent their afternoon passing out invites and securing a keg. The news buzzing around the motel was that the party would start after the chaperones went to bed (chaperones being a loose term for a couple professors who were along to see the game themselves and make sure the trip ran smoothly), around midnight.

And it did. The music wasn't too loud, just someone's small stereo. The room was just a small motel room, but they crammed easily fifty people in there, and Jack was one of them.

Ennis refused to come. Jack was angry, and all he could think of to do was get hammered, so that's just exactly what he did. He was sitting on a queen size bed with about fifteen other people, an' they were telling sex stories. Jack knew enough to keep his mouth to himself-- well, to keep his words to himself, anyway.

The girl scrunched up next to him was takin' her liberties, leanin' in and gigglin', and she smelled so fine, like peppermint. No wonder 'cause she was suckin' on a candy cane, giggling between licks. He engaged her in a conversation, what was her name, what was her major (business, it turned out). And before he knew it, he and Lureen-- that was her name-- were doin' one of those drunken crowded make-out sessions that tasted like peppermint. It started slow, lips close, intoxicating smell...

Jack missed the knock, but sure as hell didn't miss it when he saw Ennis walk into the crowded, sweat-hot room. Ennis's eyes caught Jack's through waves of Lureen's dark brown hair, and Jack pulled away. Still, he felt the red lipstick on his lips like that red A that one woman had from The Scarlett Letter. _Shit shit shit shit shit shit shit._

"Ennis," Dave chimed, drunk and happy to see a new face. "Ennis! Why are you here! What took you so long! This is my man, Ennis!" Jack was surprised Dave knew Ennis's name, but he remembered talking to Dave at the game, so. Dave had a pretty good drunken memory, he guessed.

Ennis looked like he wanted to turn and bolt from the room, and who could blame him. Jack felt suddenly a hundred time more sober. Dave was takin' Ennis around and introducin' him, though it was more like, "Ennis, this here's some drunk guy I don't know, and his chick who look at the boobs on her, and this... this is Chaz's friend I think, an' this..." In fact, Ennis stopped following him about two people in to the introductions, but the fact was lost on Dave, who continued around the room.

Ennis was approaching him, and Jack scrambled off the bed. "Lureen, Lureen, this here's my roommate, Ennis."

Lureen smiled up through hazy-drunk eyes. "Yeah?" She turned to Jack. He thought maybe she thought she was whispering from the way she said it, but she practically yelled, "He's cuuuute."

"Yeah." _Shit, shouldn't have said that._

"Jack, you drunk, come on now..." Ennis went for his arm and pulled him up.

But too quickly, because Jack was suddenly floundering for the trash can. He needed to puke and quickly.

The slut, what was her name again?, was rubbin' Jack's back gently, soft words coming out of her mouth, as he hunched over the trash can. Ennis hadn't been too happy to walk in and see Jack necking with Lureen, but in a way it also made him feel better. Jack really wasn't queer. Still, he had no right...

At the same time, Ennis wanted so bad to rub Jack's back, to whisper something that would make him feel better. He couldn't, of course, but it did make him feel better that someone could. He hated to admit it. But right now, Lureen was what Jack needed.

When Jack was done, he swayed a little on his feet, and looked up, dizzy. When Jack's arm stretched out and he wrapped a strong, clammy hand around Ennis's wrist, Ennis felt like he might have a heart attack. Lureen was still clinging to him, though.

"I'm gonna take him back ta go to bed."

Lureen nodded. "You need help?"

"Nah, our room's just right next door." He braced Jack with a firm hand to the shoulder, and led him back to their room through the rather mild winter air. Jack gulped the air like he needed more.

Their room was empty, their roommates still at that other party. Ennis laid down Jack ont he bed and took his shoes off. Not able to help himself, he stroked a hand across Jack's sweaty hair. "You alright, bud?"

"Huh? Yeah, I... shit."

Ennis grabbed the trash can and put it by Jack in bed. "Sleep it off."

Jack never answered, passing out right before Ennis's eyes.

The bus rolled out the next day. Jack was silent and hungover, an headed off to sit in the bus while Ennis went to pick up breakfast. When Ennis got to the bus, Jack was sound asleep slumped in a window seat... and Lureen was settled in beside him. There was nothing Ennis could do about it that wouldn't draw attention to himself, so he sat n a seat next to some guy he didn't know, feelin' foolish 'cause he was carryin' two breakfasts-- muffins an' OJ. Ennis was plannin' on just finishin' them both himself, but eventually he managed to get over himself enough to stand and hand a muffin an' OJ to Lureen. "He, uh, might want there when he wake up."

"Oh, thank you. You're-- you're Jack roommate, right?"

"Uh, yeah."

"At home, too, or just on this trip."

"No, uh, we share an apartment in Laramie."

"Great, then if this lug never wakes up, you can give me his phone number." Lureen winked. "Your roommate here is a gooood kisser." She pried the breakfast from his hands without a second glance.

Ennis had no choice after that. He shuffled his way back to his seat, alone, wondering just how many people knew that Jack was a good kisser, and wishing to God he weren't one of them. But nothing to change that.

Jack woke up when the bus jolted to a halt.

"Oh good, you're awake," a pretty feminine voice chirped.

Jack pried his eyes open, the light outside still seeming too bright.

"We're stopping for lunch."

"Al... alright." Confusion was still filling his brain. He remembered this was the girl from the night before. He remembered kissing her... Was that why Ennis wasn't sitting with him? Ennis was probably angry. But Jack had been pretty drunk, an' he did sort a miss the scent of chick. Surely Ennis ought to understand.

"Where's Ennis?"

"Who? Oh, is that your roommate?" The bus was pulling around to park for sure now. "He brought you breakfast earlier." She handed him a mushed-up muffin that'd been wrapped in a napkin and crammed in a seat back.

"Thanks." Jack made a mental note to throw it out at earliest convenience. "Where'd he go?" Jack sat up to look around.

"I dunno, he's on the bus somewhere. So, does this mean you're rejoining the world of the conscious?"

Just then the hiss of the bus parking announced the end of their conversation, the main doors screeked open, and everyone was shuffling blurry-eyed towards the exit. Another McDonald's on another empty chunk of earth. As soon as Jack's feet hit asphalt, his eyes were scanning in the too-bright sunlight. He noticed Ennis standing at the outside of the group, hands in his pockets, looking down at his feet and with the dark eye cast of someone who had just lost his best friend. That was all the invitation Jack needed.

But when he showed up and Ennis's elbow, he found Lureen had following him. His intended words, something sweet and silly, something bright and tender, faded on his lips. Instead all he could say was, "Hungry, Ennis?"

Ennis glared up at him through his eyelashes, eyes squinting too, as though searching.

"Come on, guy, I'm hungry." Lureen pulled Jack's arm towards the McDonald's.

They were some of the last people to head towards the restaurant, and as he was being dragged, Jack managed a sappy smile and a snatch-and-grab at Ennis's jacket cuff. His hand slipped, and he kept moving towards McDonald's, but he mouthed a "help me" at Ennis.

It was all worth it to see the amused upturn of Ennis's lips, a smile that reached his eyes. Ennis shook his head, and Jack imagined what Ennis might a wanted to say, "You got yourself into this, you get yourself out."


	7. Chapter 7

**AN (SPOILERY):** I started this story because I thought it was fun. But I see now that this is really an exploration of a lot of my own esteem issues. I have this same star-researcher!Ennis and fuck up!Jack having this same love-hate relationship inside of me right now. Anyone who wants to make something of themselves in science has to start leaving behind things that ought to be a priority. I wanted to sort of demystify the culture of professional science for you, the readers. Here it is, in its nitty gritty glory. I bet a lot of people will be like, "Ennis, don't go!" I bet any scientists out there, though, will be like, "Oh man he has GOT to take that internship!" Many scientists out there will probably even be able to say, "when I left my loved one to take my position at blah..." Yeah. It happens. A lot. It's the life of a scientist.

Also, I now know the University of Wyoming doesn't have a winterterm. Deal.

* * *

Chapter 7

Jack and Ennis managed to squeeze into opposite sides of a booth, but that left plenty of room for Lureen, who squeezed in next to Jack. It's been kind of cute and kind of funny at first, but Jack was started to get downright annoyed. Was this chick so desperate? Did she think one kiss at a party made them soul mates or something? They munched in silence, and climbed back on the bus, Jack and Ennis silently understanding, pushing in front of Lureen, claiming two seats next to each other.

"'Scuse me, I believe I was sitting there." Lureen blinked down at Ennis, turning on a charm falling on blind and deaf senses to it.

"Uh, Lureen, Ennis and I have some stuff to discuss. Sorry about that. See you in Wyoming." It was the best Jack could say, and he had to be polite, so.

She was alright, though, just smiled, answered, "sure you do," and turned to Ennis's old seat.

Jack and Ennis slept most of the way back. When the bus arrived, it was practically the middle of the night again. Most people didn't even both with goodbyes, just setting their feet towards home. Jack was a gentleman, though, and he made sure Lureen had someone to walk her in the direction of her dorm first. Mollified, he covered the half mile back to Ennis's-- their-- apartment, foot-dragging. When he got back, he popped open the cupboard, but, seeing that it was bare, he collapsed onto to the bed, no sex, not snuggle, just down and out in sheets that smelled like home. However, Jack did have the presence of mind to remember what day it was, and to mutter as best he could a "Merry Christmas" before unconsciousness claimed him.

Christmas was kind of a nice time around campus, Ennis thought. Most of the students were gone, so you could walk without bumping into people, and you could hear yourself talk. It was a good time to be near campus, almost made him glad he was an orphan and didn't have to deal with families. The down side was that a lot of businesses were closed. They didn't have any food, really, and even the grocery stores were shut down. Take-out places wouldn't have many customers on this day, especially on campus. So they were on their own.

Ennis was up earlier than Jack, and fetched some cheese from the fridge for breakfast. He unpacked that Hallmark card. He hadn't even took the time to read it in the store. He'd grabbed it 'cause it had a deer on the front, which seemed kind of manly, but inside said, "Cuddle up with God's Creatures and Have a Merry Christmas." He rolled his eyes, knowing what he was in for by giving this card, but it was the only one he'd got, so he wrote "Ennis" in it, leaving off any signature line because of the simple fact that he wouldn't know what to sign it with. He licked it with a dry tongue, sealed it, wrote "Jack" on the front, and dropped it to the kitchen counter. He hadn't got any present for Jack, and he didn't see how he could help that, so the card would have to do.

Ennis sat down with a textbook, an elementary once he'd picked up at a used book sale at the union for two dollars, and just flipped idly through the pages. Winter break of the previous year, Ennis had tried to spend doing research, but as an undergrad, he didn't have a building key, and always waiting around on cold days for someone to tailgate in got tiresome quickly. This wasn't much better, though, he had to admit.

Jack didn't get up and shower until two pm. When he did, he came out with the two cards and handed one wordlessly to Ennis. Ennis opened it. It was simple, a picture of a blue tree ornament, and it said, "Have a Merry Christmas and a Joyous New Year." Ennis nodded his thanks and reluctantly handed Jack his card.

Just as he predicted, as soon as Jack read it, he began snickering like a little kid. On the one hand, it was a nice sound, but on the other, Ennis knew he was about to be made fun of.

"You didn't read this before you bought it did you?" Jack was trying to muffle his chuckled behind a fisted palm.

Ennis looked down, blushing and shaking his head.

"Aww, come 'ere, you. You creature a God, you." Jack was chuckling again as he threw an arm around Ennis's shoulder.

Turned out the card was kind of a good thing, though, 'cause the arm-over-shoulder turned into more of a hug, which quickly became more serious, as their hugs tended to. There Jack was, so close, stubble on stubble, chin resting against his own, pulling back so they could see eye to eye, too. And like it always did, something tenable in the air snapped taut, and stern orphan Ennis was nuzzling at a man's chin, needing to be against Jack. Jack's hair was still damp from his shower, and Ennis's hands reveled in the coolness of it against his heating skin. He took Jack's head between his large hands, and just held it there for a minute.

It was Jack who made the next move, that tautness made real and dancing, as he frantically started to unbutton the shirt he'd only just two minutes ago finished buttoning. Ennis waited him out, and sure enough, before Jack's fingers had even finished clamoring at his own buttons, he had a hand on Ennis's.

Ennis took the opportunity to go for pants buttons on both sides. They were a team, and were slowly developing their own choreography, their own practiced motions.

Jack pulled Ennis back towards the bedroom, stumbling, walking backwards over laundry and books, his own jeans slipping down to add to the difficult shuffle. Ennis moved his hands to Jack's waist to help in the groping dance. Somehow, by some miracle, they did actually end up falling into bed when they finally fell. Jack suppressed something that could only be called a boyish giggle, causing an unseemly gurgle to escape from Ennis's throat.

Ennis, overcome, had a tendency to hit the gas with a lead foot when it came to lovemaking. Still strangled in his own desire, he freed Jack's legs from pants and underwear, bent Jack double enough to make Jack gasp so hard from stretching his legs that he wasn't even able to gasp from being entered, his breath now thoroughly stolen by pressure to his diaphragm. Still, Jack didn't complain, arched up, eyes crossing in something Ennis took as need or bliss or both. Ennis stretched out an arm, ground fingers to bruising into Jack's left shoulder, the other hand pushing Jack's legs' up further. Jack's face was turning red, but he was moving, arching, whining and grunting. And then, as quickly as it had started, it was done, and Ennis wished he'd been more gentle, taken more time, enjoyed it more. But Jack didn't appear to be making any such wishes, dropping sedately down to the bed. His breathing eased, his face turned from its angry purplish-red back to a normal shade, and Ennis dropped down on top of Jack.

Even after both sleeping in, they slept like that for another two hours. Even though they'd both already showered that day, they both took another. Together.

"Jack." Ennis was looking down at the water pooling around his feet, waiting for Jack to finish up with the shower head.

"What's'at?"

"I didn't, I didn't get you anything for Christmas. I'm sorry, I guess I wasn't thinking."

"Damn straight you weren't." But Jack flashed him a smile.

Still, smile and all Ennis, just dropped his head again.

"Ennis. Hey, you got me something. Look, you let me stay with you. You gave me a home away from my old man. The trip don't even hardly begin to pay you back for that. Alright?" Jack clasped a strong hand on Jack's shoulder before throwing the shower curtain aside, admitting a blast of chilly winter air from the exterior of that little cove of steam. Ennis stepped under the hot water almost as quickly as Jack scrambled for a towel.

For Christmas dinner that night, they ate what they had: Oodles of Noodles and Coke and beer left over from Jack's dorm fridge. They watched TV, flipping between football games they didn't quite care enough about and Christmas Movies that were surprisingly fun to make fun of. Before long, Jack was leaping around the room doing his own impressions of Frosty the Snow Man and Old Man Gower and whoever else would float across the smallish screen. They both stayed up late, playing cards and joking around. Ennis thought it was possible his best Christmas ever, and wasn't sure it would ever be topped again. He felt like a little kid, left home without his parents on Christmas, free as the wind, and young as when the world was new.

Jack was still working for the month. As long as there were classes, the dining hall was opened. He did have a week off before that, though. Ennis spent the week in the physics building, studying and typing away in his computer, programming mathematical code. Jack followed him in one day, dreaming that maybe they could have a nice time working together, but it only took him about ten minutes to get sick and tired of Ennis's work and drift off. He ended up reading a pretty crappy sci fi novel he found in the undergrad lounge. Reclining on that decades-worn-and-stained sofa, trying not to notice the cockroach eying him enthusiastically from the facing wall, Jack decided he wasn't spending his week off this way.

He had some friends from class who were local to Laramie, so he spent most of the rest of the week doing things with them: ice-hockey on a local pond, horror movies at Kerson's. He spent a lot of time sleeping, too, and playing video games, both on his own system and over at Allen's with some other guys from Calc class.

At night he'd come home and he and Ennis would make something simple, or get some takeout they really couldn't afford.

But after dinner, that was when Jack's day really got kicking. This week, this break, Christmas and knowing they had years of living with each other ahead... The living together thing stood as a silent acknowledgment of what Jack knew they both felt about their relationship now. It was so sudden. A few months ago, they'd been straight boys who had a working relationship, and now... It seemed a lot could happen in a short amount of time, because Jack was slowly coming to realize he couldn't imagine a life without Ennis in it.

Sometimes it was the little things, the way Ennis would sometimes rest a hand around Jack's elbow as they jostled in the kitchen for the space to peer into the fridge, the way they sometimes went for a walk and Ennis would brush a little too close, the way they'd still sit up half the night and talk about things from their childhood-- their favorite toys and worst nightmares, all safe to share.

Sometimes it was the bigger things, the big thing of exploring each other sexually in ways neither of them had had before. That was what they spent most of the evening doing, truthfully, and Jack was ok with that. More than ok, really. They didn't just fuck like kids any more, but they'd explore, stroke here, tickle there. Jack was trying to be more creative at every go, but he was afraid of scaring Ennis off, too.

Sometimes it was the nothing things. Sitting on the couch one night, watching Seinfeld, swear to go if Ennis's hand didn't snake over and ensnare Jacks, Ennis's thumb running lazily across the back of Jack's hand. Jack was hard a a rock for the entire half hour, but didn't want the blissful moment to end, didn't want to spoil this sexless moment, this sating need deeply craved for knowing someone was here with you, with the sex they could have any time. He barely managed a full breath the entire show, and had at last attacked voraciously at its end, but something had happened then and there and the discussion that Jack had been intending to put off eternally, discussions about the Future, the real Future with a capital F were going to have to be had someday. he felt it shivering his bones like the rattle of a train coming up the tracks, and it scared him just as much as standing on those tracks when they start shivering.

"Happy New Year," Ennis whispered that night as they crawled into bed. Jack hadn't noticed the date.

The week was over too quickly for Jack's taste, and he was back to school. At least it was a film class. It met Monday through Thursday, all afternoon. They watched a movie, discussed it, then turned in a mini essay every other day. Nights at home were spent writing the essays, sometimes telling Ennis all about the movies he saw, sometimes just watching TV while Ennis had his nose stuck in some physics book.

Ennis's study habits kind of annoyed Jack. he was always at it. Some nights it was hard to even drag him away. Half the conversation he had were about theoretical physics. For Jack's part, if he wasn't doing a physics assignment, he didn't really want to be talking about physics. Ennis simply could not understand that mentality. It hadn't been as much of a problem during the school year, when Jack's brain was a little more tuned in, and physics had been on some interest to him. But right now what he wanted to talk about was Cool Hand Luke, The Searchers, Vertigo, and Citizen Kane. He'd never thought movies were so interesting, but it was kind of neat seeing what kind of psychological tricks directors can pull on you without you knowing about it.

And way before Jack was even ok with it, a short three weeks later, winter term was over. Jack'd pulled an A for once. He decided he kind of liked being able to concentrate on just one class at a time. Now was spring semester, though, and that meant Electricity and Magnetism, Mechanics Lab, Observational Astronomy, and some other classes he needed for his basic requirements. He took another class from the English department, 'cause even thought it didn't interest him much, he thought the work was pretty easy. Anyone could sit down at a keyboard and bullshit a two-page essay on anything, and it was beyond him how people managed to fail out of such classes.

The semester started without any fanfare above Jack's frantic scramble to come up with book money. He eventually gave up and put the books on his new student credit card. Ennis grumbled about that, about credit cards and debt, but Jack just quipped, "It's my card, what's it to you?"

Jack didn't say, but he was secretly touched that Ennis was worried about his credit score. And like a girl, he sat and daydreamed maybe of the day that he and Ennis were trying to go in on a house and a little land together, and maybe his credit score would matter to Ennis. He vowed to be more careful with his money, but right now there was nothing he could do. He was already buying the books used.

Ennis was taking physics classes, too, plus some other classes to fulfill extra requirements, things he was interested in. Their schedules didn't coincide much, but on Friday afternoons they did manage to meet at the union for lunch. After that, Ennis would head on down to the lab, and Jack would take the afternoon to do his homework for the weekend. He used to leave it to Sunday nights, but it seemed maybe Ennis was rubbing off on him.

The spring was wonderful. The snow started to melt. Nothing except for an exam here or there impinged on their life together. They ate in more, and Jack's insistence, his new plan to worry more about money. It got muddy for a little while, but the grass filled in and greened up eventually. With the inevitable restlessness of all students, they both looked forward to the summer, whatever it would hold. Ennis tutored Jack informally on physics and calculus. Jack helped Ennis with an essay or two when it came up for his other classes. Sometimes they even laid in the springtime grass on a Saturday afternoon and chatted, just two in a campus field of hundreds of students lazing about. What they talked about didn't matter, and was usually something stupid, like why do they call it a parkway if you drive on it. Nineteen ninety three was being good to them.

Summer came at last. Jack was still working at the dining hall, only now he had to go in for the morning shift at 7:45am. Ennis was still working in Pitt's research group, eight hours a day now, and making headway on some real research. In the afternoons, Jack took Linear Algebra, the summer class just another reason to stay away from his parents' place. After that, he worked the dinner shift at the dining hall again.

The summer went just like that, until Jack got a summer flu halfway through linear algebra, and missed a whole week of class, which, for summer session, was not just a little bit.

Ennis came back from work one Monday to find Jack home from the dining hall early, pulled up under the covers.

"Why you here?"

"Sick," Jack moaned.

Ennis let him be, and went about doing the dishes.

Jack ended up in bed for all of Monday and Tuesday. He was up and about on Wednesday, but starting to feel pretty shitting by evening. Ennis was watching TV alone for the third evening in a row when Jack, bundled in a spare blanket, stumbled out of the bedroom.

"Ennis?"

"Yup?" Ennis muted the TV to give Jack his full attention.

"I need a favor."

Ennis rose to his feet. "You need something from the kitchen."

"No, no, nothin' like that." Jack sighed, his eyes feeling gritty, puffy cheeks, headachey. "You gotta see my professor tomorrow an' bring home my homework."

Ennis stopped and looked at him for a second. "But, I mean, what'll he think?"

Jack had absolutely no patience for Ennis's bullshit now. "He'll think your my goddamn roommate. Tell him I got the flu, get my homework assignments, Jesus. You act like you got 'fairy' tattooed 'cross your forehead." Jack would have never said such things with so much insensitivity to an Ennis he knew was still struggling with his sexuality, but Jack's patience was running near zero, being sick, and frankly, they were going to be approaching a year together in a few months, and Ennis had better have some kind of progression in his struggles. Jack slumped back off to bed, but as he slept off and on, sometimes just laying there sick and trying to distract his mind, he also thought about Ennis. Ennis, who was probably mad at Jack for calling him a fairy, had some personal problems to work though, an' he didn't seem to be gettin' there on his own. Jack thought shrinks were a waste of time, but he also couldn't be Ennis's. Maybe Ennis needed a mother or somethin'. Maybe a role model. He didn't know. But he knew that he still had some demons of his own. He's never wanted kids, but he did see himself as someone's husband, provider, breadwinner, some cute little thing, like that Lureen from when they were in Texas. He didn't have time nor energy to work through his own problems i and /i Ennis's.

Ennis, this time, though, took Jack's advice at face value. That very night he e-mailed Jack's professor, a guy named Headman. He got a response with an hour. Ennis had no misconceptions about the lives professor live. He and Headman were going to meet first thing in the morning to discuss Jack's classwork, and Ennis would bring the stuff back to Jack before lunchtime.

That was exactly what Ennis did, but he also made some chicken noodle soup for lunch before heading back out again, and Jack had nothing to do after that but wrap up in his blanket and get to work on Linear Algebra. Ennis had told him he was going to have a test on Monday, and all jack knew was there went his A in this class. Wasn't goin' a happen now no way.

Monday, Jack was in class, and he took the exam. It didn't turn out quite as horribly has he had feared, but he was doing alright. Wouldn't totally fail the class. He talked to Headman afterwards about when his late homework would be graded, and left to the hot summer air.

Jack was utterly surprised, though, to run straight into Ennis as he left through the building door. "What are you doin' here?"

"Oh. Just bored at work. Thought maybe I'd walk you over to the dining hall."

"Well, I got a little while."

"Good. I want a talk to you." Ennis sounded angry. Jack saw a stand of trees alone on the far side of the sidewalk, so he pointed Ennis over there. Jack stepped into the shadow of the foliage like a condemned man, sure that Ennis's words were the bringer of doom in some sense. Probably nothing too bad. There life was so much humdrum already. Maybe Ennis was pissed about the fairy comment. That was probably it.

Ennis was pacing, kicking at the ground a bit and working his jaw.

"Well?" If Ennis was gonna find some reason to be pissed at him, better sooner than later.

"I, um." Ennis squinted up at Jack through the sprinkled dapples of sunlight. "Bruce, uh--."

"Bruce?"

"Dr. Pitt."

"Oh."

"He wanted me to apply for this internship. I... I didn't know how to say no. So I did. He... he asked about you, you know."

"Yeah?" Jack's head was reeling and he didn't know what else to say.

"Yeah. Wanted to know if we were... well, you know."

"Yeah."

"I... I took the internship, Jack. Just now, called them up and said. It... it's the opportunity of a lifetime. You gotta know I wouldn't leave you otherwise."

"You're leaving me." Somewhere inside Jack had known this was a breakup speech. "That what you told Dr. Pitt?" he wanted to be angry, or crushed, something, have some emotion to show, but everything was moving in slow motion, everything but the shifting sunlight.

"No! No. Jack..."

"Whut?"

"I'm not... I didn't mean to say it like that. I'm not leavin' you like that. I told Bruce..." Ennis lowered his voice. "Yeah, I told him we were living together." Ennis blushed and ducked his head. "But I just... it's at Max Planck, Jack. How can I? How could I say no to that?"

"So what am I supposed to do?"

"I dunno. We can talk about it later."

"Shit, Ennis. You are so goddamn selfish, I--"

"Look, Jack." Ennis's voice erupted in anger, and rose a bit too loud. "You know this is me. I got a do this! This isn't some Podunk internship. This is a year a fuckin' Max Plack. And I'm supposed to turn that down just 'cause you swoonin' at my feet?"

Jack turned bright red as he saw an alarmed Dr. Headman emerge from the math building. Headman looked away quickly and walked on by, looking at his feet.

"Would you be quiet?," Jack hissed. "I ain't swonning nothin'. Fuck you. Go to Germany for all I care. Good riddance." Jack turned to walk away, but felt a hand snake out to snatch at his arm.

"Jack!"

"Whut?"

"Jack, come on. I didn't mean it to come out like that. But you know what a big deal this is to me."

"Yeah, you gotta be a famous physicist."

"I don't want a be famous. I just want a i do /i something, Jack. Be remembered for somethin'. You know? I don't... I can't be content with just... just bein' a fuck up for the rest a my life. I ain't you."

Jack's face fell, moving to the angry zone past angry where you no longer know what to do with your hands, where you know you couldn't yell loudly enough if you tried. He knew what Ennis really thought about him now, what kind of respect Ennis really had for him.

With a calmness that scared no one as much as himself, Jack spun on his heels and walked to work at the dining hall. He was going to need every cent he could save for a new place in the fall, since the chances he could get back into the dorms were pretty much zero. He felt lost, floating alone in space, home ripped away from him. But then, he guessed that's what he got for assuming anything would last him past tomorrow in this life.

After all, he was just a fuck up. Who would want to be with him?


	8. Chapter 8

**Disclaimer:** Not my characters, and I make no money from them.  
**AN:** Unbeta'd.

* * *

Chapter 8

Shit. Ennis hung his head in shame, unable to make his feet move, unable to understand just what had happened, parsing back through his words to find out where this had gone all wrong. He watched Jack's back retreat up the hill. He wanted to say something to make this better, but he was angry too, for no reason he could put his finger on. The shadows shifted in the breeze and he turned right, heading for the creek that ran near the parking lot behind the building. He didn't know why, but he just needed to be alone for a while.

He sat by the creek for about ten minutes before climbing to his feet again. He didn't know what was going on in his life anymore. Maybe he was really queer. That much he didn't think he could escape, though he hadn't really made the admission in so many words to himself before. Still, using those words didn't change anything. Only a gay man could feel this hollow ache inside for another boy. He exhaled hard. He knew it wasn't easy in the world as a gay man, and he could howl with frustration at finding himself _as_ one. Knowing it himself, though, didn't mean anyone else had to. He wondered how long he could sit on that secret before he gave himself-- or Jack-- away.

But none of that changed anything. He'd said something really bad to Jack. He didn't even quite remember what it was, and he'd almost forgotten entirely about the internship, but he ran back through the words he'd used in the fight. What had he said? Something that sounded like calling Jack a loser or something. He remembered that. He rubbed a hand across his forehead and headed up the hill, following Jack's still-cooling trail on the pavement like that boy lit the world wherever he went.

* * *

When Ennis arrived at the dining hall, he went up to one of the cashiers and asked for Jack Twist. The cashier pointed Ennis to the sandwich line. Behind its counter, a fine looking young man was slapping mayonnaise on bread, wearing a scowl. Ennis went and got in line, waiting.

"What you want?" Jack wasn't looking up, cleaning some mustard off the counter with a paper towel, waiting on the next order, trying not to think about anything but how many tomatoes he had and where was Kelly, wasn't she supposed to bring more tomatoes?

"Uh... jus' PBJ I guess."

Jack looked up, damning himself for lighting up a little bit inside. "You know that costs five dollars?"

"Shit. So?"

"'Sides, you have the ingredients at home. I happen ta know 'cause I bought 'em."

"Well, I ain't home. I'm here."

"Ennis, go home."

"You get a break or anything?"

"I just got here!"

"Well, maybe later?"

Jack sighed. "Maybe in about an hour."

"Alright. I'll wait for you."

"Ok. Next?"

"Hey, wait now, what about my peanut butter and jelly?"

"You're not serious."

"Yes, I am."

Jack blew his breath between lips held by a clenched jaw, but even as he did so, he felt his anger fade. He knew Ennis was a bigger fan of peanut butter than jelly, so he halved the jelly, doubled the peanut butter, cut the sandwich on the horizontal 'stead of the diagonal 'cause one time Ennis had made fun of diagonal cutting, and grabbed Ennis a handful of pretzels and not chips, 'cause he knew Ennis didn't like plain chips. All of that without a word, passing the plate over the counter.

Plate changing hands, Jack hazarded a glance over at Ennis, their eyes catching for an instant. Whatever it was that flowed across that dining hall counter, Ennis was giving him a sheepish, "I'm sorry" smile. Jack returned it with a cool, "we'll talk" lip-twist, and Ennis left the line.

Making sandwiches for the rest of the hour, person after person coming up to the counter, many of whom he saw every day and yet couldn't even remember what kind of food they liked, Jack wondered at the miracle of communication he had with Ennis. Somehow they just _knew_ what each other was planning to say.

And for that reason, just pissy enough to want to be heard out, Jack took a break at the hour mark, begging Kelly to cover the counter for him. He didn't have long, but he found Ennis in the back of the dining hall, scanning the college paper with disinterest, plate long empty.

"Alright I only got ten minutes, tops. Why are you here?"

"Jack, I shouldn't have said those things. I am sorry. I jus'... I gotta take this internship. You understand?"

"Yeah, Ennis. And I want you to. But you should have told me you were applying, you know?"

"Yeah... I guess I didn't think I'd get it, an' I didn't want a worry you none."

"Ennis, I'm not a little kid. You don't have to protect me. I'm a grown man."

Ennis hung his head, rubbed his neck. "Yeah, you sure are."

"So what's this mean? About us?"

Ennis's head snapped up. "It don't mean anything, Jack--" Ennis stopped for someone to walk by their table, and continued again, under his breath. "It don't mean anything. We'll talk about this later. But, you know, it's not forever. Just a school year. We'll figure it out."

"You want to?"

"What?"

"Figure it out." Jack held his breath, the out offered for the sake of the offering.

"You know I do." Ennis looked almost angry. "Shit, Jack. Just..."

"Alright, alright. I know. We'll talk later, and then I'll call you some names, make up for--"

"I'm so sorry 'bout that. It didn't come out how I meant. I just meant your priorities were different--"

"Yeah, well, whatever. I know I'm not too smart--"

"I never said--"

"But you know I do try really hard--"

"Damn hard. Jack, you--"

"Just shut up, alright? Listen to me. I know I'm not too smart, but you know I try real hard, and I gotta think that counts for something, you know?" Jack's eyes met Ennis's, pleading silently. "I mean, if it doesn't... I'm not smart enough to do this, Ennis. You know I'm not. I have to think I just want it badly enough. Do you think I'm making a mistake?"

"Jack, you're smart--"

"Oh cut the fucking crap. I'm not you, Ennis! I'm not a genius. Every single problem of every single homework set is a fucking struggle for me. You know 'cause you've seen it!"

Jack held Ennis's eyes. He was desperate for the truth, the straight dish. Was he really a fuck-up?

"Jack," Ennis started. "Jack... you're right. You aren't the smartest kid in the physics program. I know you're always on the bottom side of the curve. I 'member last semester, Gayle got a higher exam score than you, an' you were practically ecstatic to have yer B, and there she was not three feet away, crying over her B . I 'member. You 'member that?"

Jack nodded, sullen. He didn't really need evidence of how stupid he was. He didn't need to be reminded. He knew.

"Jack, a lot of people fail out around here 'cause they aren't smart enough."

"Yeah."

"But you're goin' a go further than all a them."

Jack looked up at that. "Yeah?"

"Yeah. You'll go further than you think."

"Nah, how--"

"You want it, Jack. You want it more than almost anyone else. Why the hell would you keep doin' it? I know how hard all this shit is for you. But I've seen you keep workin' into the early mornin'. I'm not gonna lie, it's gonna get harder for you an' me both. More for you, I think. But when I give up an' go to bed, you don't give up. You stay up all night workin' on it. That's what you got. You don't give up. An' I think that'll take you farther than any kind a smarts. You remember that."

Jack just starred, mouth agape.

"I think your break's over." Ennis stood and patted Jack on the shoulder. "See you later." He put his plate on the conveyor and left the dining hall.

* * *

And they did figure stuff out. Ennis had to move in September. They put out an ad and found a Chinese grad student in math who was willing to split the rent. They bought a twin-size bed to pretend Jack had been sleeping on, lofted it, bought another desk. The but truth was, even with all those changes, even with a new roommate, Jack couldn't really afford his half of the apartment. He doubled up his hours at the dining hall, but tuition wasn't cheap, and Jack's folks didn't have much money to send him. In the end, Ennis volunteered to send part of his monthly stipend to go towards rent. That hurt Jack's pride more than maybe anything ever had, save his daddy's fist, but he knew he couldn't afford it otherwise. Ennis couched it as his way of making sure he still had an apartment to come home to, but Jack knew that was just an excuse.

Teng Shu was a quiet boy. He had a girlfriend, and that made Ennis happy. Ai Xie was her name, and she was cute, but didn't speak much English, and also a math graduate student here, also from China. Shu's English wasn't bad as far as Jack could tell, though it was hard to tell considering he hardly ever spoke a work. Xie seemed about as talkative as could be. Jack and Ennis met with Shu a couple times to exchange information, keys and mailbox codes and moving dates.

Finally, Ennis was all boxed up and ready to go. Jack knew Ennis was more nervous than he was letting on. He'd never been out of Wyoming let alone the country, and Jack guessed Ennis was worried that his education would be inadequate, given the sheer number of books Ennis had packed. They shipped a couple boxed to some post-doc in Germany who would be picking Ennis up and who had set Ennis up with a form there. His stipend was $25,000 US, so given his living arrangements, and with another man (Jack had felt a stab of jealousy, but had quickly squashed the irrational feeling, knowing it came from nowhere), it was more than enough. Ennis lived frugally already.

Before either one was prepared, the day had arrived. They bought long-distance calling cards, and Ennis called the airport shuttle to come pick him up. He had a stopover at Dulles, and another in England. Jack was secretly worried about Ennis, knowing he hadn't been in a plane before. The sticky sheen on Ennis's palms gave away his well-concealed agitation as well.

"Don't worry about it. You'll go there, do a ton a physics, and come back." Jack smiled, pumping more joy into the morning than he was feeling at all.

Ennis muttered something beneath his breath and grasped Jack tightly. They'd said their goodbyes the night before, and Jack was wondering how long he could go without changing those sheets that smelled of Ennis. The whole event was so surreal, nightmarish in quality, Jack just wanted to get the goodbyes over with and move on to the hellish pain of aloneness. But not really aloneness, knowing that somewhere on the other side of the world was a man who's said they'd make this work. Lots of people made long-distance relationships work, he told himself.

Ennis turned too quickly and left the apartment, leaving a cold space where he'd once stood. Like a bandage, it was over, and too hard to believe. Jack choked on the feelings inside of him. He ran to the window in time to see the airport shuttle pull out into traffic.

* * *

The shuttle driver was watching him with dark eyes, wondering. Ennis was barely able to contain the sobs, the guilt, the sickness, the weighty knowledge of twelve months of cold nights and dark days, of inflicting that same thing upon Jack for the sake of his _career_ of all things. Maybe it was all a mistake, but it didn't matter, it was far too late to take it back.

Before he realized he'd done it, a sound had escaped like the howl of a wounded animal, his fist connecting solidly with the velour back of the beige bucket seat in front of him. The driver's beady eyes narrowed in the rear view mirror.

"What the fuck you lookin at?," Ennis murmured, his only energy left.

It had only taken him a minute to see that he shouldn't have let Jack out of his sights.


	9. Chapter 9

**Disclaimer:** Not my characters, and I make no money from them.  
**AN:** Unbeta'd.

* * *

Chapter 9

Ennis took forever to finally board his first airplane. Amid the sound of high-pitched, beeping cars racing back and forth through carpeted hallways, Ennis felt like a living ghost or a robot, just mimicking the motions of the other passengers around him, starring dully at the uniformed airport officers until he was sure they thought he was a moron. He was takin' ten seconds too long to answer their security questions. They probably figured he was too dumb to be a risk. He'd checked a suitcase. His beaten-up army surpass backpack was his only travel companion. He'd stuck a physics book in there, plus some paper and a pencil, but in the airport he bought some crosswords. He wasn't really sure how he was goin' to stay entertained as long as he'd be in the air.

The plane he was taking was a tiny one. He had to walk out on the asphalt to get into it. It was one aisle with seats on both sides of the aisle. He took his seat, a window. A few minutes later a large, middle-aged woman sat, chubby hands gripping a romance novel. The plane was bound for Denver, an' had all sorts of people on it. He was glad the women never did talk to him. The propellers were so loud on the plane that talkin' wasn't so practical anyway.

Take off was different than anything he ever experienced. He felt himself get pushed back into the seat, then he felt sort of weightless, then extra heavy again. He never once cracked his textbook or his crosswords, just starred out the window at the great blue yonder. The world from up here looked like mountains made out of heaping white clouds. The flight was noisy and not even an hour, but he never once took his eyes off those white clouds. He felt like he never even blinked.

Descent was a new experience as well. It was more of the weightless experience, like Ennis was fallin' from the sky. It made him nervous an' like he was out of control. He gripped the arms of his chair tight until they evened out. When the wheels hit the runway with a screaming sound, he tried to breath easy, but wasn't quite able to until they were totally stopped again.

When they arrived in Denver, they had to get out on the asphalt and walk to the airport terminal, just like they'd had to walk to the plane in Laramie. It wasn't anything like airplanes on TV where they had tunnels to the plane. Ennis gripped the strap of his backpack tightly, like maybe someone was gonna come up and wrestle it away from him. He hadn't never been in a city as big as Denver, and it scared the shit out of him, even though he wasn't plannin' on leaving the airport.

Once inside the airport, Ennis checked and double-checked his ticket about eight times. He wandered up and down the stale-smelling carpets until he was sure he found the right gate, but it didn't even list his flight yet, but another. According to his ticket, his flight wasn't even boarding for another three hours. Keepin' in mind the location of his gate with the same skills that he would use to navigate a trail on a hike back home, he sought out some food. He settled for a hot dog and Coke at a little airport stand. Then he went back to his gate and did crosswords until he thought his eyes were about to fall out. He didn't even particularly like crosswords, but the truth was he was a too damn nervous to do any physics, and he didn't much like the book selection at airport bookstores. He wasn't much of one for reading. That was really more Jack's thing. Ennis tried to stomp that thought-- an' the accompanying emotions-- back down before they overwhelmed him. He wasn't even out of Denver yet. There wasn't any way he could fix this thing, and if there was one thing his dad had taught him 'fore he died, it was if there was something you couldn't fix, you just got a stand it.

Trying to think of this time in the airport in that same light, Ennis leaned back in high black leather seat and closed his eyes, not sleeping, just standing the passing of every minute.

The next plane he boarded was headed for Chicago. This one he got to use one of those tunnels like he saw on the TV, and it was considerably larger than the first, and a lot quieter. It was going to be in the air for less than three hours, though it also had a time change so according to the clock it was more like four. Eventually the crew brought around drinks and a little foil baggie of a snack mix. The snack was too small, but Ennis ate it mechanically, not tasting it a bit. He wasn't hungry anyway. He ate it because it was what everyone on the plane was doing. He'd heard about airplane snacks, and he reckoned it was what people did on planes. He tried to look out the windows, but it was the same white cloud-mountains it'd been before. He leaned back against the seat. They smelled like too many people'd leaned back on them. He miraculously managed to catch an hour or so of restless, unsatisfying slumber against the vomit-colored velvet.

The airport in Chicago was different from the one in Denver, except that it was the same in its most fundamental properties. His flight to Munich was supposed to have dinner served on it, so he took this time to raid a few news stands and bookstores. He didn't find much of anything that looked interesting. Ennis picked up an issue of popular science about airplanes. Maybe it'd be neat to read about airplanes now that he'd been on one. Maybe not. The layover was two hours, which went pretty quickly since it was only an hour until he boarded an' there were extra questions an' stuff 'cause they were goin' to Europe.

When Ennis got on this last plane, the first thing he noticed was that, though the second plane he'd been on had been considerably bigger than the first, this one was just huge. The plane had three seat sections: three seats on each side by the windows, and a wide row down the center. Ennis's seat was on the right, but the window, but not against the window-- the center seat. He plunked down next to a foreign man, Chinese or Japanese or somethin', he couldn't tell. The man was wearin' a suit. After a little while, a skinny black woman with a lot of hair, a dark pink suit on herself, and a look of importance was sittin' on the aisle, squeezing a leather briefcase under the seat in front of her. Ennis was still clutching at his backpack like it was the heart he knew had fallen out of his chest somewhere. Wedged between these suited people, in for a long flight an' his first time out of the country too, Ennis tried not to be nervous, tried not to feel the perspiration gather at his temple.

When the stewardess told him to, Ennis squeezed his backpack under the seat in front of him as well, leaving him empty and unguarded. The people-- flight attendants is what they called themselves, and there was a man, too, though he couldn't be a stewardess, and Ennis secretly wondered if he was gay _too_-- passed out plastic bags of cloth stuff. Ennis didn't even notice what he was now clutching to his chest with equal fervor as he had his backpack, so busy was he starin' at the normal-enough-lookin' blond man. Maybe he wasn't gay. Maybe straight men did this job, too. What did Ennis know? He'd never flown before. He'd just heard rumors 'bout men who did things like become stewardesses.

They finally took off, an' everything was normal jus' like them other flights for a while. Ennis tore into the little plastic baggy to see it contained a blanket, socks, and an eye mask. He eyed the socks with special confusion. No matter how long the flight, he was not plannin' on gettin' that comfortable 'round all these strangers.

They passed out dinner 'fore long. It was pretty generic-- something you might find in a microwave dinner. It was pieces a chicken with pieces a veggies on rice. It came with a cookie. Ennis got a Coke with it. He was doin' fine until the man next ta him started usin' chop sticks an' was elbowin' him in the side. Even that he could ignore, but the worst imaginable thing happened. The woman crammed in next to him on his right turned to him and started a conversation.

"So... young man like you... what takes you all the way to Germany?"

"Uh, school, ma'am?"

"School?"

"Yes, ma'am. Study abroad."

"Oh. What do you study?"

"Physics." Why did he feel like he was on the defensive in some sport?

"Physics! Wow, you must be smart."

Ennis _hated_ that reaction. Of all reactions he ever got, it was the one he hated most. What was he supposed to say? Yes? No? Thank you? He settled for a non-committal nod.

"Must be hard to leave all your friends and family, huh?"

Only one face flashed through Ennis's mind, and he thought, _You got no idea, lady._ He just nodded again. It was as polite a response as he thought he could get away with without actually saying anything.

"A girlfriend, maybe?" The woman asked.

Ennis wondered if people ever committed suicide on airplanes. He felt like he might a been blushing a little bit.

"Aww, well. Do good, you hear?" The woman must have got the hint, because after she wished him luck, that was the last conversation she attempted with him all the way to Germany.

For a while, Ennis tried to look out the window over the Chinese man's shoulder. All he could see was utter darkness. He wondered if you could see the ocean far below. He'd never seen the ocean, but either way, he wasn't about to be seeing it now.

Ennis had thought the flight had been boring so far, but in reality he had no idea what he was in for. It only got worse. They lowered the lights, and he put on his eyemask and wrapped the blanket around his elbows. But he was delusional if he thought there was some way in hell he could have slept. He told himself it was the nap he'd taken on the earlier flight, or that the air was too stale or too dry to ignore, or that the elbows of his close neighbors kept hitting him, waking him up. All those things were even true. But none of them were the real reason that Ennis couldn't sleep.

He hadn't slept anywhere without Jack in months, and when he closed his eyes in this foreign space, he felt lonely, so lonely it gave him as much trouble breathing as did the dry air, hurt his sides as much as being elbowed. He didn't admit to himself that he wanted to go home. He couldn't admit that to himself. So he just wrapped the blanket more tightly around his elbows, squeezed his eyes behind the mask as if they could block out more light, and tried to count some sheep he'd never known. It was easier to think of sheep and white-capped cloud-mountains than of Jack alone in covers that were big enough and warm enough to hold them both.

The endless waiting did eventually end. Some time later Ennis was getting off the plane. He couldn't get off quickly enough. By now the air was nearly too dry to breath, and he felt like he just needed to get out of there immediately or he was going to stop breathing altogether. Before long he found himself in the airport. It was busy with people, speaking a language he didn't recognize. The place was too bright, too white, and for a moment he almost wanted to clamor back to the familiarity of the stale airplane. But then he saw a sign he recognized the meaning of, and that particular destination came to occupy his mind.

The bathroom was just as bright and echoing. He'd peed a couple times on the plane, but here he washed his face and scrubbed his teeth until he felt human again. Businessmen buzzed all around him, and he felt like an alien, like a cow in a chicken coop, but he was already so out of place that he couldn't look stupider, so he didn't even bother with whether he looked out of place or not.

From there, he followed the signs and claimed his luggage. He dug out a piece of paper that was the address he was supposed to give a cab. Even before he found the cabs, though, he went over to a pay phone, dug out his calling card, and dialed the overseas 1-800 number. Following through all the steps, he finally heard the phone ringing in the apartment back in Laramie.

"Hello?" Jack picked up.

"Hey."

"Hey, you! How was your trip?"

"Shit. Was long."

"Yeah, I bet. When'd you get there?"

"Just now. I'm still at the airport."

"No shit."

"Yeah."

"Well... thanks for callin'."

"Yeah."

"Miss you."

"Yup. Me too. Should probably go. Find the dorms."

"Yup."

"Jack?"

"Yeah?"

"Talk to you later."

"You too, Ennis. Bye."

Ennis hung up first and quickly. Though he'd called Jack to ease the pain, it'd somehow only made the ache worse. Ennis stared at the phone for a few empty minutes before he drew himself up and hauled ass towards the doors. He was about ta head into Germany for the very first time.

* * *

Jack turned to see Teng eying him from the kitchen table. 

"What?"

"That was Ennis?"

"Yeah. My old roommate."

"Yeah. I know who he is."

Jack swallowed the lump in his throat, hoping that Teng's words didn't have any double meanings. He hadn't been watching what he said to Ennis on the phone. He ran over the words in his mind, feeling small under Teng's scrutiny. But Teng was an alright guy. Surely he wouldn't care. Probably he wouldn't really care. Of course, Jack had known him all of one day, really.

Teng shrugged. "You guys just seem close is all."

"We're friends."

"Alright."

Jack turned and left the room. He needed a shower, and that'd been too close to something. He could kick himself. Ennis hadn't even been gone more than one night, and already Jack was being foolish, getting himself into trouble. He hadn't slept a wink last night. He'd watched the stars out his windows-- sky night fire, wondering if Ennis could see the same stars from his airplane. Would Ennis even look? Maybe not. Jack was the foolish romantic between them, he knew, the one who went stargazing and who didn't have the common sense to watch what he said in front of his brand new roommate.

* * *

The room was alright. It would work. There were two beds and two desks. Two closest. The beds had dressers underneath them. Two bookshelves. Two lamps. One wall of windows. The floor had a lounge as well, and there were two pay phones in the lounge. A small dining hall was in the basement. The food there was German, but it was simple enough that Ennis reckoned he could make due. This was a dorm pretty much specifically for visiting students, and it was a small dorm. There were maybe twenty guys and maybe ten girls or something in the whole building. 

Ennis's roommate was a guy named Ryan. He was an American from California, a student at Stanford. He was a little bit annoying. Ryan talked a lot and liked to act like he knew everything. From what he said Ennis guessed that they were probably well-matched academically, but Ennis didn't like these guys that liked to talk so much 'bout everything they knew. Lot a times that was how you could find out about everything they didn't know.

Ryan was into video games. He talked a lot about them. Ennis didn't know anything about that, but Jack played video games with his friends sometimes so all that talk did was make Ennis miss Jack more.

The next day after Ennis got settled, he was introduced to the professor he would be working with. He wasn't doing gravity research here, but gamma ray astronomy stuff. He didn't care. He was young enough in his career that a wide variety would only look on his CV, so he dove in on the first day. Besides, this was stuff Jack liked, and it felt good to be working on stuff Jack liked.

His first week was mostly reading books and papers and missing Jack and having trouble sleeping. His adviser was surprised how much reading he got done, but he wasn't, 'cause he stayed up all hours a the night doin' it. He wanted to call Jack, but needed ta hold out. He needed ta prove to himself that he could. He figured he'd call Jack on Saturday and then make that a weekly thing or something, 'cause otherwise he'd call him every minute of every day. He hadn't given Jack a phone number or anything, but Ennis didn't have a phone in his room, so it couldn't be helped.

Ennis planned on phoning Jack Saturday, but people were in the lounge where the phone was and he didn't want to make the call with company. He woke up extra early on Sunday morning instead and went down the hall to the lounge, which was finally thankfully empty, to make his call. He figured made it sometime the night before Wyoming.

"Hello?" That wasn't Jack.

"Uh, hi. Is Jack there?"

"No, I'm sorry, he's not. Can I take a message?"

Ennis stared at the phone. He hadn't expected this. He didn't know why he'd just been expected Jack to be sitting right there by the phone. It was a Saturday night. Where could he be? Visions of Jack fucking some girl flashed through Ennis's mind and made his stomach turn, but he squashed them just as quickly. If they were going to make this long-distance thing work, they were going to have to trust each other. For sure after all their time together, Jack wouldn't be out on a date with anyone after Ennis had been only gone a week. Still, Ennis couldn't help but be disappointed to not get to talk to Jack.

"Hello? Hello?" Teng was talking again. Ennis must have stayed silent too long.

"Oh. Uh. This is Ennis."

"Oh. Yeah."

Ennis was a little worried by what the tone in Teng'd voice meant. "Do you know when Jack'll be back? I don't have a phone so I have to call him."

"No, I'm sorry, I don't know."

"Ok..."

"Well, I'll let him know you called."

"Thanks."

Teng hung up, and Ennis was left staring at the quiet phone he gripped, white-knuckled in his hands.

* * *

It was one hell of a week for Jack. He tried to concentrate in his classes. He wasn't sleeping that well at night, but the irony was that he couldn't stay awake so well during the day. He managed to get his homework done and turned in, but it was a bit half-assed. A lot of it was done between ten pm and four am. The result of this bizarre sleep-pattern, and his general loneliness, was that he was moody, an' always snapping at people. People noticed. 

Ron, another physics major who'd had physics classes with Jack for a year now, was the first to notice. Before Jack barely had the chance to object, Ron was planning a little something for Saturday night. They were going to have a Star Wars movie night. Jack wasn't a huge mega Star Wars fan like the rest of the physics students, but that wasn't something you told them unless you wanted to be shunned, so he went along with the whole thing. So Saturday night found them with pizza, beer, Star Wars, and about 15 people in Ron's tiny apartment cheering on Luke Skywalker and making fun of C-3PO. And whether he was a star Wars fan or not, the general ridiculousness of it all made Jack smile. He had to admit it lifted his mood. Somehow they managed to make everything Han Solo said relate to sex with Luke Skywalker, which was probably somewhat funnier to him than to the other guys, but he wasn't about to announce that as well. And of course he made sure to whistle like a sex fiend when Princess Leia was in her slave girl outfit. Gayle and Becca, the only chics in the physics crowd, beamed them with pillows. It was a riot. He slept better that night, passed out across Ron's crappy, stained couch, than he had all week.

Sunday morning he wasn't even all that hungover when he arrived back in his own apartment, pleased to think of it of his own finally, though it had been Ennis's first, and was still Ennis's in a way. He was more than pleased to think of it as Ennis's too. Ennis's and his. His and Ennis's. Theirs.

"You had a phone call," Teng shouted out from the bedroom.

Jack dropped his keys on the kitchen counter.

Teng emerged, freshly-showered and ready for church. "Ennis."

Jack felt himself freeze. The good mood he'd been in from the evening before washed off of him like so much paint covering a weather-beaten exterior. He didn't have a number or anything for Ennis. "Oh. Did he say when he would call back?"

"Nope. Sorry."

"FUCK."

Teng gave him a look, but shrugged. He ate a pop tart, and left for church, all while Jack stared, lonely and frozen, at the telephone right there on the kitchen counter.

Jack stayed in all Sunday. That was ok, since he had plenty of homework to do. He just camped out at the kitchen table and pulled a nice, studious, Ennis-like day. He was taking one physics class, one astronomy class, one math class, and one psychology class. It was only a week into the semester, but it was already a bitch, with three technical classes, and his one and only tutor and emotional supporter thousands upon thousands of miles away.

Finally, around 11:45pm when Jack was just about to give up on his homework and watch TV or something, the phone rang. He practically ran for it.

"Hello?"

"Hey." Ennis. And luckily Teng was out with his girlfriend this time.

"Ennis. Christ, I am so sorry I missed your call. I was over at Ron's. They had one of their lame Star Wars marathons."

Ennis chuckled.

"You got a phone or something? I need your number."

"No, not in the dorm."

"Oh. Well, how 'bout we agree on a time?"

"Yeah, alright. How 'bout late Saturday nights. Your time."

"Well. That could be a problem if anyone's wantin' ta do anything."

"Yeah. Guess."

"Sunday mornings?"

"'S fine."

"Great."

"So..."

"So how're thing in Germany?"

"Fine."

"How're the dorms?"

"Fine."

"You got a roommate?"

"Uh... yeah. Guy named Ryan. Talks too much. From Stanford."

"Oh."

"Yeah."

"What are you researching out there?"

"Gamma ray telescopes?"

"No shit! Cool! That's my kind a stuff!"

"Yup. 'M also takin' a couple classes."

"Cool. What classes?"

"Uh... Jus' stuff. You don' wanna hear 'bout it."

Jack swallowed. He was a little bit hurt. He did want to hear about it, but he did _not_ want to fight about that over the phone. Ennis was hardly a good conversationalist in person. Conducting this relationship by phone was going to be utter hell. The brief idea of phone sex flitted past his imagination, but he couldn't even manage phone _talk_ with his cowboy. Somehow he knew that phone sex would be him feeling retarded jerking off into an utterly silent and judgmental receiver.

"Well... I'm taking psychology. That class seems like it's going to be pretty cool."

"Uh huh."

"I mean, we learn about how people learn, but also about brain diseases and stuff."

Ennis didn't respond.

"You there?"

"Yup."

"Well, you know, if you always call me, you're going to run out of minutes on your calling card before I do."

"Can't be helped I guess."

"Maybe we can work out something where I call this phone you're on?"

"Maybe?"

Christ Ennis was being not-helpful. "You mad or somethin'?"

"Shit, no. Why you say somethin' like that?"

"Uh, never mind. My mistake."

"Well, I guess I'll go. Talk to you next Sunday."

"Yup. Miss you."

"Bye."

"Bye." Jack sat, staring at the empty receiver in his hand. Why had he spent so much time already staring at phones? This was not what he wanted out of a relationship, be he was going to have to face that it was what he had. It was all he had right now. This was a piece of shit, and somehow talking to Ennis made it hurt more. It made Jack want Ennis more. Maybe it would be better if they didn't call each other. But Jack knew that wasn't a solution either. This was just a fucking bitch of a fucked up mess. But it was for Ennis's career.

That night Jack did sleep well, but only after he curled up on his side, took his dick in his hand, and pumped hard to his own loud grunts. Teng wasn't home so he let himself fly, angled his hips so his thrusts just barely grazed the sheets that hadn't been changed since Ennis had lain in them. Shit, it had only been a week and Jack felt like he was dying, because it was going to be so, so much longer, and he didn't have a clue how he was planning to make it through. He felt like a man who'd wandered into the desert without so much as a canteen.

* * *

Another week passed. And another. Jack jerked off into his sheets. Eventually he changed them. Sunday phone calls happened as planned. They didn't go any better, but they didn't go any worse. He simply tried not to feel much of anything. He tried to concentrate on his homework. He pulled some of the best grades he ever had on his own, but they weren't as good as what he would have gotten if Ennis were around. Ron tried to set him up with a girl, but Jack bowed out of that. Nothing changed for a while. 

Until the beginning of November. One Sunday Teng was home. Jack had just gotten off the phone with Ennis. Teng closed his textbook and looked up. "Ok seriously, what is with you two?"

"What do you mean? Nothing." Jack said it too quickly, even for his own ears. He winced.

Teng studied him for a moment, shrugged, and said, "You're gay."

"Am not."

"Yeah, you are. You and him."

Jack felt a wave of nausea sweep over him. He held Teng's eyes.

"Look, I don't care," Teng continued. "Though it is pretty pathetic how you hang around the phone on Sundays."

"Can you..." Jack fumbled nervously for a smoke, his voice shaking. "Just don't tell anyone, ok."

Teng shrugged again. "I said I don't care."

And that was how Jack ended up coming out to Teng, though Teng was as good as his word, and truly seemed to not give a good goddamn. Jack avoided him for the next week, but there was no real need to. Everything went just as it had been going.

* * *

Ennis kept to himself. He tried to avoid Ryan, though they were taking classes together, so they did their homework together most days. But outside of that, he didn't really want to be around people. 

Still, there was no way he could say no when the grad students in his research group invited him out for a night on the town. He wanted to get out of it so fucking badly, but he couldn't. They were like his bosses. Yusef, Liz, Wilhelm, and Johann had often tried to draw him out of his shell, but eventually they declared that alcohol was going to be the way to do it. From the moment they started plotting, he felt nauseous, but soon he was being kidnapped from his dorm, shoved into a small taxi, and dragged through the streets of Munich. With all the lights and sounds and people he couldn't tell what was going on, but he did like the food where they ate. The grad students picked up the tab, and they ordered him beer after beer until the whole room spun, and then took him someplace with so many lights that it seemed like maybe the whole room really _did_ spin. They stuck close to him, though, and he remembered them talking about whether he would be ok, so he figured he was safe with them. Johann was dancing very close. Very close. The blond was maybe an inch taller than Ennis and had a muscular build. He didn't look like Jack and he wasn't built like Jack, but maybe he would feel like Jack. Ennis missed Jack so fucking badly. He slung an arm around Johann and heard his lips murmur, "You don't feel like Jack." He remembered Johann slinging an arm back around him. He pushed Johann away, like in a dream. Then he dashed outside and threw up on a street corner. He heard Liz giggling in her Australian accent, "Guess our American cowboy is a little bit gay." They shoved him back into a taxi. The last thing he remembered was someone shuffling him back into his dorm room where he'd gratefully passed out in his own bed, all ramifications of the evening blissfully forgotten in the haze of unconsciousness.

* * *

Sunday evening Ennis talked less than usual on his phone call to Jack. He felt like Jack could see through him, see through each and every one of his words. He thought maybe Jack could see how Ennis had reached out and touched Johann in the club in Munich. Ennis felt like it was written on his forehead, in his voice, on his soul. He ducked away from people in the hallways. He bowed out of studying with Ryan. But he couldn't pass up his phone call with Jack. Still, he kept to half sentences. Jack said very little, and Ennis was sure it was because Jack could hear the guilt that leaked out between his words. He'd never been more sure than he was now that he'd made a terrible mistake leaving Jack behind.

* * *

Sunday morning when Ennis called, Jack didn't say much. He was terrified Ennis would be able to tell from his voice that Teng knew something. He knew Ennis would be fuming to know that Jack had let something like that slip. Ennis might not forgive him so easily. Ennis might not trust Jack to take care of himself, and Jack couldn't handle being thought of and treated like a child by Ennis, like he couldn't take care of himself. So he kept his words short, sure that he inadequacy was written on every one. Ennis seemed tenser than usual, and that just reinforced the idea. It wasn't a good Sunday for phone calls, and then he finally put down the receiver, Jack had never been more sure than he'd been now that he should have never let Ennis get away from him. This was just not working.

* * *

Ennis took a long smoke outside and wondered whether he and Jack were really meant to make it through this. Maybe they'd be better off apart. Of course he'd still send money back. Couldn't leave Jack without a place to live. But right now Ennis was just fucking up. Ennis didn't know what was going on or why he would do that. He didn't know how he was going to face Johann at work tomorrow, or Liz, or any of the grad students. He thought about faking sick, but that was just a lie that would get him into deeper trouble. He'd smoked half a pack before he realized how late it got. Not having decided anything, but feeling more alone than he ever had even in all his years as a lonely orphan, dragged himself back to his bed, but didn't sleep. He awaited morning and the sentence that came, whatever it was, for a man who'd been found out in Germany. 


	10. Chapter 10

**Disclaimer:** Not my characters, and I make no money from them.  
**AN:** Unbeta'd.

Chapter 10

"Well you look surprisingly alive this morning." Liz didn't even look up from her computer to say it. Johann and Wilhelm were leaning over a monitor speaking quickly and quietly in hushed German. Yusef was typing away, though he did spare Ennis a glance and a chuckle. Ennis grunted and sat down at his own computer. He got straight to work, and the morning went just like any other. Tom, the post-doc, came in the lab to microwave his lunch, and babbled on about American politics. He seemed to think Ennis, as the other American, would care, but he didn't. Eventually Tom drifted off. Ennis went to his afternoon classes. He went home and had dinner in the dining hall, did his homework with Ryan, and went to bed. Somehow he had survived the Monday.

On Tuesday, Greg, one of the professors in charge of the group, called a group meeting and teleconference. They hadn't had one since Ennis had been in Germany, so he didn't know what it would be all about.

When the time came, they sat in an office around an oval table and talked to some guys on speaker phone about their data storage for the next phase of their project. Ennis mostly zoned out, thinkin' about his homework and... other things. Liz brought him a black coffee, mistaking his disinterest for fatigue, and Ennis tried to at least fake takin' some notes.

When Greg said, "Alright, Alexi, send an e-mail to the group, and we'll check it out," Ennis's head bounced up.

He didn't know what they were checking out. Moments before they'd been talking about a new kind of computer drive that could hold more data, so it was probably something about that. Still, Ennis didn't even know they _had_ e-mail addresses.

When the group meeting was over and they had all left the cramped office, Ennis caught up with Liz, who'd been the nicest of the grad students to him so far, and whispered. "What's this 'bout e-mails?"

"Oh? Alexi-- he's the post-doc with John at LANL-- is going to e-mail us the info on some new hard drives we're thinking of ordering for storage."

That wasn't really what Ennis had been asking. He didn't know how John was, didn't care what they used for data storage, and only knew vaguely that LANL was a national lab in the Southwest U.S. somewhere. "No, I mean, we have e-mails here?"

"You didn't know that?"

"I've never much used it."

"Oh yeah. Let me show you."

When they got back to grad student office, Liz pulled a chair up to Ennis's computer and got him logged in to the Max Planck e-mail server. She showed him how to use a simple program called emacs that she favored to write an e-mail, and had him send her one. He must have smiled like a fool, though, when he saw that she'd gotten it, 'cause she smiled back and asked, "Why are you so excited about this Ennis? You got a Yank boyfriend?"

Ennis's grin slid straight off his face and out of his eyes. Liz just chuckled and went back to her own work, shaking her head. She was learning quickly when to tease Ennis and when to leave him alone.

Ennis went to his afternoon classes, but he couldn't concentrate. All he could think of was the fact that he knew Wyoming gave out e-mail accounts to the students. He had never used his, and he didn't know if Jack had much either, but Jack had one, and Jack, being more savvy with technology with his computer games and shit, probably knew how to use it, anyway.

That night Ennis took his dinner from the dining hall to go, and used the pay phone in the lounge even though there were a couple guys in there talkin' in some language that sounded like German but wasn't quite. It was about seven at night for Ennis when he called Jack, which meant he didn't have much chance of gettin' him unless he'd been skipping classes or something.

In fact, Ennis didn't get Jack, or Teng, but he did get the answering machine. That was safe enough with this guys around, and for Teng's ears. He left a message. "Jack. This is Ennis. Uh. I got a e-mail here. It's That's P-L-A-N-C-K-dot-E-D-U. I mean, in case there's a problem with the apartment or something and you need to tell me. Bye."

Ennis hung up like the phone'd burnt him and looked around. No one in the lounge was paying him any mind. Thinking back, he was starting to feel a little foolish about that last part. Still, he was worried, with how frequently he called, that Teng might know something. If Ennis had already given himself away to the grad students, who else was likely to see this thing written on his face or voice.

Though it wasn't like they cared, did they? He was having a bit of a hassle with Yusef. Earlier today he'd overheard Yusef saying to Liz, "Why do we get these undergrads. They don't do anything and they suck away our work time." Ennis didn't think he was sucking away anyone's work time, and there was one other undergrad working for Tom, the post-doc, but still, Ennis was going to be careful to be extra productive at work from now on just in case Yusef's statement was meant about him. But it hadn't been about who he liked to fuck.

Ennis went to his room to do his homework, but nothing in the world could stop him from checking his e-mail every hour from his dorm computer until the full moon had climbed high into the sky and Ryan had long ago turned out his own light and climbed into bed. At two a.m., Ennis finally gave up and followed suit himself.

When Ennis woke up, he didn't want to be one of those lovesick fools who checked for a message first thing, so he didn't. He went into work and tried to be extra useful, not even checking his e-mail through classes in the afternoon, and not until after dinner. He didn't want to be that guy drooling over an e-mail from another guy. He didn't want to be.

But at seven p.m. when he opened his e-mail and saw just two e-mails sitting in the in-box, one from alexilanl.gov, and the other from Ennis knew which one he was going to be opening first.

* * *

The week has been a different one for Jack. It was the week where they showcased student clubs on the grassy area between the main classroom buildings, and Jack and some friends from class had spent their Monday killing some time there. They had done this every semester so far, because it was _the_ best way to replenish your supplies of pens and pencils for the following semester, and if you came early enough on the first day, you could get enough free T-shirts to make shopping trips unnecessary for the next semester as well. Jack had scored two T-shirts already: one from a bank, and one from a new off-campus student-housing co-op. He had a plastic bag full of candy, pens, pencils, foam things that called themselves "stress balls" but made good weapons in fights with friends, free condoms (not that he even used them, but it wouldn't look right if he didn't take them...), coupons for local eateries... it was a good haul for sure. 

Eventually, though, Jack's class friends drifted off. He wasn't looking forward to going home himself. It would be another night alone in the apartment. Sure, Teng would be there, but that didn't mean Jack wouldn't be alone. Jack had no homework to bury himself in for once, no study sessions to go to. It would just be him and lousy Monday night TV, trying to get ahead on the week's assignments, maybe do some laundry. Instead, he stayed at the showcase for a while. It was likely to be the last of these pretty fall days for a while before the long, empty stretch of Wyoming winter settled in. Jack and Ennis should be celebrating their first year together, but instead they were looking at celebrating their first year together apart.

"Want some free condoms?" A guy at a table right in front of Jack asked him.

Jack realized then that he'd been staring in the direction of the dude's table for a good minute while he'd hashed through the evening ahead in his mind. Embarrassed, Jack stammered a "sure" and grabbed a handful from a bowl. The disinterested kid went back to organizing pamphlets on the table. All the stacks looked surprisingly full, even this late in the day. "So what kind of club is this?" Jack asked, making small talk. Most of the free-condom clubs were frats, so maybe this was a less popular frat. Jack stepped back to read the sign.

The boy's head shot up and waited, and when Jack's eyes finished sending signals to his brain, Jack understood that the boy was waiting to be called a name, or maybe for Jack to just turn and run away before anyone saw him at the table. Thinking to his lonely night ahead, to the boy he was missing and how he didn't have a single person in the world to talk to about that, not even Teng who didn't want to be involved in his roommate's personal life, Jack shocked himself when he asked. "Ya'll have meetings or somethin'?"

Only then did the other student stand up. "Oh. Um, yeah. Once a month in the student union. I'm sorry, I wasn't... I didn't think you knew which booth you were staring at."

"I... didn't."

"Oh."

"I was actually... But, I mean... Do you mind if I ask you a few questions?"

"No, not at all. I'm Randy. The vice president of Spectrum."

"Jack Twist." They shook hands over Jack's friendly smile.

"So, are you..?" Randy asked, but Jack understood the full questions.

"Yeah, I guess so. I'm... I'm actually in a relationship at the moment, but it's long-distance you see. I mean, it wasn't always. Normally I wouldn't think of talkin' like this..." Jack looked around but saw with some relief that this last in the afternoon the crowd had thinned a lot and no one here would know him anyway. "Well I'm just sick of it all bein' a secret. It's been a hard time on me." Jack felt his smile falling to a frown. He didn't know why he was telling this stranger so much, except that he hadn't told anyone anything and he was so alone in this.

"Well, tell you what," Randy said, "we're packing up for the night here in ten minutes. If you want to stay and help me out, I have an evening class, but I have to pick up dinner. You can eat with me and tell me all about him, and maybe I can tell you a little bit about Spectrum."

Jack's stomach jumped. He didn't care much about clubs, but the idea of just sitting down and blabbing openly about Ennis send shivers of thrills down his arms and legs. It was, he thought, just exactly what he wanted, maybe even needed, so he said yes almost too quickly.

They had McDonald's and sat at an unassuming table inside. The conversation was innocent enough. Randy talked about what they did at Spectrum meetings, and what kinds of things Spectrum was about. Jack told him about Ennis studying abroad in Germany for the year, told him about Ennis not wanting to come out at all. Coming out was something they discussed at meetings sometimes. Jack said he might attend next time, and he meant it, as long as everyone was as nice as Randy. Randy told him that was so. They shook hands once again and parted ways.

On the long walk back to his apartment, Jack wondered why he'd said he would come. He didn't really mean it. The thought of going to some meeting like that scared the crap out of him, let alone what would happen if Ennis found out about it. Though Jack thought he was kind of sick of worrying all the time about Ennis finding out this or finding out that. He didn't want to be afraid of what Ennis might think or might do all the time. He didn't even know why he was except that Ennis was his everything, and doing anything to put their relationship on the line terrified Jack. Somehow he still didn't trust that it was there for good, even with an ocean between him and Ennis.

Jack got to thinking, though. Why _shouldn't_ he go to such a meeting. Ennis wasn't even here. Ennis didn't control him. Jack was an adult and he could join any student club he wanted to, from paintball to ballet. And he liked to have sex with a boy, didn't he? Most of his problems, if they weren't related to classes, revolved around that. So this was one where he belonged, wasn't it. Hell yes. Hell yes, Jack would go to the damn meeting. If only because he was afraid to, he would go.

He got home then and saw there was a phone message. Jack grabbed himself a beer and pressed the little plat button.

"Jack. This is Ennis. Uh. I got a e-mail here. It's That's P-L-A-N-C-K-dot-E-D-U. I mean, in case there's a problem with the apartment or something and you need to tell me. Bye."

Jack was turning on his computer in an instant, all defiant thoughts of how Ennis was always controlling him shoved aside and buried under more urgent and desperate needs to get into the e-mail account he vaguely knew he had but had never used for personal purposes. It was a frustrating hour before he finally had it all set up properly, since he'd forgotten his password and had to call the student services office, which was, luckily, open twenty-four hours. But finally Jack sat at the keyboard, hunting and pecking to the best of his ability, spelling out a note to the boy he wanted to talk to in person but couldn't. This was the next best thing because at least no one was listening in, like on the phone. Jack's smile grew as he typed.

"ennis,  
good to hear from you. This e-mail is pretty cool, huh? Nothing's wrong with the aapartment, though. Hope you don't mind if i e-mail you anyway. How are things there? The weather has been real nice hear. We had our clubs showcase today. Got a lot of crap.

Miss you. Hope you don't mind me saying so by e-mail. No one can overhear or shit. Ennis... I gotta tell you, Teng knows. Didn't want to tell you that on the phone. But he's cool. Guess I haven't played it so cool. You gotta know I'm dying here.

But I'll live. You know we been together almost a year. Wow, huh? Suck you aren't here. I'll wring one out just for you! JJokin! Except not really. Miss you. I think i already said that. You can e-mail me back whenevere. Have a good day.

Jack"

* * *

Ennis read the e-mail about ten times in a row. He wanted to be mad about Teng, but he didn't even care that much. There'd been a time when Ennis couldn't imagine anyone being ok with finding out his roommate was gay, but the grad students here in Germany barely cared, and Teng was a grad student too. Maybe grad students just had more on their minds. After reading too long and too hard, Ennis finally put together a response. 

"Jack, I miss you as well. I am glad you e-mailed. I am sorry I am not there in Wyoming. Maybe I should not be here. I am sorry. I am glad to hear Teng does not care. There is something you should know from me as well. The graduate students in my lab got me drunk some and I told them about you, but they do not seem to care. I am worried they do not think I work hard enoguh. Class is getting tougher. I do not like my rooomate. He's alright, but kind of full of himself. Why didn't we think of this e-mail sooner. Write back quik, Jack. i am missing you. Sorry about the one year thing. I am sorry about that. This is better than the phone. Wish I was there with you, Jack.

Ennis del Mar"

* * *

Jack checked his e-mail relentlessly on Tuesday, discovering the locations of every little library and computer lab he hadn't known existed. He finally got back from classes at 4:15 to find one waiting for him. 

Teng wasn't home. He read the e-mail what felt like a million times until he could almost hear the worlds coming from Ennis's mouth, apologies heartfelt and aching. It hurt Jack to read them. Jack could see already that Ennis had learned something, not about physics, but about humanity and acceptance, from the grad students in Germany. He was glad Ennis had gone, even if they had to spend their anniversary apart. Seeing Ennis think his trip was such a mistake, seeing Ennis apologize so many times, really tore a hole through Jack. He wanted to wrap his arms around his man and let Ennis finally take a rest where he belonged. Ennis had had to be the bad guy in this, the one who pushed Jack away and went in search of his career, and now Ennis was collapsing, thousands of miles away with no one to hold him up.

Jack sat down to write an e-mail he was sure would make Ennis angry, but the truth was he needed to write it and it was quite possible Ennis needed to hear it.

"Ennis,

Please don't feel so bad. I think Germany's doing you some good. You talked to some people. That's good. Real good. i'm real proud. I know you don't need me saying it, but i am. I'm doing alright. Dont feel so bad on my account. I will always still be here when you are done. I know it's not the best way to say it, but i love you and you are doing just fine. Gonna kick my ass in school when you get back, huh? As usual. But i'll take you out for tacos maybe. Bet there aren't any good Mexican food in Germany. Just sausage crap? Good beer though. Can't blame you for getting drunk.

Jack."


	11. Chapter 11

**Disclaimer:** Not my characters, and I make no money from them.  
**AN:** Unbeta'd.

Chapter 11

_"Ennis,_

_Please don't feel so bad. I think Germany's doing you some good. You talked to some people. That's good. Real good. i'm real proud. I know you don't need me saying it, but i am. I'm doing alright. Dont feel so bad on my account. I will always still be here when you are done. I know it's not the best way to say it, but i love you and you are doing just fine. Gonna kick my ass in school when you get back, huh? As usual. But i'll take you out for tacos maybe. Bet there aren't any good Mexican food in Germany. Just sausage crap? Good beer though. Can't blame you for getting drunk._

_Jack."_

Ennis stared at the words for an eternity. The room was dark. Ryan was tucked into his bed and making silly little sounds through his nose, the soft snores indicating that he was fast asleep. Apparently the eerie blue cast the monitor gave to everything in the room didn't even phase Ryan in his quest for slumber. Ennis had sat up later than usual awaiting just this-- an e-mail from Jack.

But when it came it overwhelmed him with its words. The e-mail itself seemed to rise up and take on a life of its own, as if the e-mail was Ennis's lover and not Jack Twist, and Ennis wished he could grab the e-mail and have his way with it. The need rose up strong, but it wouldn't be decent with Ryan in the room, and the bathroom was down the hall.

...Though it was likely to be deserted this late. Some of the guys might still be up doing homework, but what were the odds of running in to someone...?

Ennis didn't think about it twice. He paused long enough to memorize the one sentence he needed more than any other, _"i'm real proud."_ It would be able to get him through whatever he needed help gettin' through, he just knew it. Ennis didn't have a clue why he cared so much that Jack was proud, but as an orphan, and maybe even before, an' with a hard ass professor like Pitt, he didn't remember the last time anyone'd taken a minute to let him know they were proud.

Not until know, when his _boyfriend_ had e-mailed Ennis to tell him how proud Jack Twist was of his man. Ennis found it was a strange thing that now that he and Jack were apart, Ennis wanted to use the word _boyfriend_, wanted to scratch it into his skin to remind him of the other sentences in the e-mail, the _"I will always still be here"_ and the _"i love you"_, even though he was pretty sure that back home he would have punched someone for usin' such a word. Seemed Jack was right about Germany doin' somethin', anyway, though Ennis wasn't as convinced as Jack was that it was a good thing.

Ennis was moving out of the dorm room and down the hallway, feeling strange in such bright light in the middle of the night. Before he could ask his feet what the hell they really thought they were doing, he busted into the awkwardly small bathroom. Two shower stalls and two toilet stalls faced a wall of urinals and sinks. He chose a toilet stall. If he'd been thinking, maybe he could have come for a shower, but he hadn't been thinking, and he still wasn't thinking by his own estimation.

_Jack, Jack, Jack..._ his mind hissed as if it were some sort of incantation that could shuttle Jack across the Atlantic and land him right here in this bathroom, but instead it simply accompanied the shaking of Ennis's fingers like music as he bolted the stall with on hand, the other already fumbling for his pants zipper.

He was hard already. He had been at least a little bit excited since he'd seen that name in his inbox, but reading it had raised the flag to full staff. Now, he simply couldn't wait a moment. As he laid hands on himself, trying to heal some aching need, it wasn't the way Jack's butt muscles curved into the darkening target of Ennis's desires, or the way Jack's balls felt faintly like velvet against his lips, or the red-hot curve of Jack's dick that he thought of. He thought on the weight of his _boyfriend_ in his arms, of being able to hold him and never ever let him go. Or even if he could not have never ever, Ennis would have traded any amount of treasure just for just one minute of Jack for real, right there. With that thought, Ennis shot hard into the toilet.

Jack Twist who was real proud of his man would be waiting for him always and loved him.

* * *

"Sorry!" Jack was thoroughly embarrassing himself with the Frisbee.

But Randy didn't seem to mind. He waved a friendly wave and loped off to get it. The days had gotten a lot cooler, and Jack was wearing heavier clothes with a sweatshirt, but sports were still possible. Randy turned out to be a Frisbee guy. Jack had never played, but that had only been to Randy like blood to a mountain lion, and Randy was on the scent. Finally, after weeks of friendship, the weather'd gotten nice enough to make a little toss-and-fetch possible.

And no doubt about it, the Randy looked like he ought to be fetching something. His strawberry-blond hair jutted in all directions. His face was ruddy with exertion, and Jack couldn't help but wonder what other kinds of exertion might redden his face, but he pushed that thought away quickly.

It was five weeks since Ennis and Jack had discovered e-mail, and phone calls had become a little less regular since then. Randy and Spectrum were his dirty little secret from Ennis, though Jack didn't know if that counted as one secret or two. But either way the secret was holding strong. Jack didn't want to fight over all that distance. Ennis had taken the "I love you" e-mail like a romantic pro, and Jack didn't even pretend that Ennis would have reacted the same way in person. Some things were just easier over the ocean.

But some things weren't, and Jack's body and mind were waging a war as to who missed Ennis more.

Jack caught and threw the Frisbee back to Randy with mechanical ease. Maybe he could learn to be a natural at this if he gave it enough time. About time he discovered he was a natural at something.

* * *

"Ennis? Are you free? Can I see you in my office for a minute?"

Ennis looked up from his computer, mouth open in surprise. Greg almost never wanted to talk to Ennis. "Uh, sure." What else could he say?

Ennis followed Greg down the hallway to Greg's office and sat in a chair across from Greg's desk.

"We have a little travel money," Greg started. "Liz and Yusef are going to be giving talks at the AAS, and I was wondering if you wanted to go as well? For experience."

"The what?"

"Double-A-S. The American Astronomical Society Meeting. It's in Washington, D.C. in January."

"Oh, I..."

"I think you should. We'd pay all expenses from the grant. You would room with Yusef."

"Oh, uh... alright." Ennis didn't even see that he was being asked. It sounded much more like he was being told, so certainly he didn't see how he could say anything else.

"Good. I think it's a great opportunity to see what fields of astronomy exist, and to see how real astronomers conduct business."

Ennis felt his chest fall just a little bit. He was being given all these opportunities in astronomy, but physics was really his thing, and astronomy was Jack's thing. It should be Jack going to that meeting and not him, but Jack hadn't never been proactive enough about his grades and his research.

"Are you going home for Christmas?" Greg asked.

"Huh? Oh, no, I don't got the money."

"No?" Greg raised an eyebrow. "Family flying out here, maybe?"

"Don't got much in the way of family," Ennis answered, hesitant to say he had _none_, but not at all about to admit who he thought of as family back home.

"Well, since you're going to be in the U.S. in January anyway, it's pretty common for people to take some time on one side of the conference or another for a little side trip. Feel free if you can wrangle it."

Ennis gaped at Greg.

"You think?" Greg asked.

"Uh, sure." Ennis didn't know how this would work, Wyoming being an awful fucking long way from Washington, D.C., but airfare from Wyoming to D.C. was a damn sight cheaper than to Germany, too, so he was determined to work something out. Until another idea struck him. "Uh, can I ask a question?"

"Yup?" Ennis liked the way Greg always gave him his full attention, something Dr. Pitt never did.

"Can other people come to the conference? Like, other undergrads?"

"You mean someone you go to school with?" Greg stitched his eyebrows together.

"Yeah. My friend Jack, roommate from home. He's an astronomy major He's about... he's about the only person I know in the states."

Greg frowned at him, watching for a moment. Ennis wondered if he'd said too much, but he almost didn't care. His hopes of pulling this things off were too high, dangerously high, if he was to tell the truth, and it was makin' him though caution to the wind.

"What about your parents?" Damn professors were always too damned nosy.

"Uh, no, sir. I'm a orphan. I got a brother and a sister, but they got their own lives ta be livin', don't bother about me much."

Greg watched him with a mix of sympathy and curiosity that made Ennis stir uncomfortably. Finally, Greg answered, raking a hand through his close-cropped dark hair. "Sure. There's a guest rate he'll have to pay."

"Oh, alright."

"He could room with you and Yusef if he's willing to split the price." Greg began tapping a pen on a pad of paper.

Ennis nodded.

"Alright," Greg nodded. "Make sure it's ok with Yusef. Ask your friend. Register. The deadline's creeping up."

Ennis nodded solemnly, but his leg was bouncing a mile a minute, and he knew Greg saw it. When Greg said nothing else, though, they made some parting comments and Ennis left the room. He didn't even wait until he was out of Greg's line of sight before he sped his pace, running towards his computer to deliver the news.

* * *

Jack laughed and raised the beer-- his third-- to his lips. "You think that would really work, man?"

Randy was sprawled on the couch, "Breathing water? Hell no!"

"It ain't really water. It's like... pink gooey water." Jack chuckled and kicked Randy with a sock-covered foot.

"Hey, don't kick." Randy shoved his leg. "And I don't give uh..." a burp, "crap what kind of water it is, can't breath it."

"Yeah, probably right." Jack gazed at the the TV as the glowing, underwater alien city of _The Abyss_ rose into view, but he wasn't really paying attention. It'd been a long day. They'd played Frisbee for hours before opting for dinner. Taco Tower and three beers later, and only a miracle was keeping Jack awake.

Jack had felt a little nervous bringing Randy to Taco Tower. They'd met for food a couple times at a sandwich shop or McDonald's, but there weren't that many places to eat. Laramie wasn't that huge of a college town, after all. Taco Tower was a place for him and Ennis, but it was just a place, when Jack thought about it. Still, Jack got three bean tacos instead of his usual favorite. It felt like having a little Ennis inside of him.

They'd come back here and decided to watch a movie. Teng hadn't showed all evening. Maybe he was stayin' with his girlfriend. He did that on occasion, more and more frequently, and Jack guessed the two of them were getting more serious. he entertained the notion for a microsecond that Teng was avoiding him for some reason, but Teng was a straight-forward guy. When something bothered him he said so, and Jack appreciated it. It made being roommates pretty simple, at the end of the day. Nope, Jack hoped that Teng had found that kind of insatiable hunger for another person that makes leaving them at the end of the day harder than skinning yourself with a pocket knife. Love was hell in a lot of ways, and Jack should know with this long-distance crap, but life wasn't worth a whole lot without it, neither. There wasn't anything like holding the person you loved. Jack tried to remember what it even felt like to hold Ennis.

Finding that that particular memory didn't come too clearly to him after three beers, Jack considered a fourth, but if he went that route he'd be passed out for sure. Though he wasn't sure why that was a problem.

Or, he wasn't sure until Randy's sprawl on the couch turned less into a sprawl and more into a lean against his side. Some warning system deep in Jack's brain was sounding, telling him to move away, do something, anything, but under a heavy wet blanket of beer, movement seemed like a Herculean feat. And damn did the warmth feel good.

It felt good to his body too, as was evident buy a tingling burn in his sweatpants lettin' the whole world, and most especially Randy, know that it wasn't just Ennis that turned him on, but also just the weight of a male body and the warmth of it against him. By the time Randy's hand found a resting spot between Jack's legs, he was steel-hard, not having felt the touch of another person in months. Shit. Randy's touch drew a moan from Jack before his brain woke up.

But it did. Just as Randy was rolling towards him, Jack felt like a bucket of cold water hit him. Something in him wanted to keep moving under Randy's hand, but a moan turned to a strangled cry as he felt his chest constrict, and he pushed Randy off.

"Randy, Randy, stop it."

"What? What?" Randy's large gray eyes were filled with loneliness and need and confusion. Randy thought he'd been reading readiness into Jack's actions, and the truth was he had been. Jack felt like he was going to throw up all three beers plus the bean tacos.

"Please leave," Jack croaked.

"Jack, I thought..."

"Can ya please leave?"

Randy's vulnerable neediness was so plain that the man looked like a little boy or a kicked puppy by the flickering alien-city TV light, but he stood, and gathered his things in an almost deathly-silence. The only sound was the movie playing, and it was just music at the moment. In less than three minutes, Randy was gone like he'd never been there.

Jack eyed his sweatpants, contents returned now to their pre-Randy condition, and swallowed around a softball-sized lump of tears. He stumbled, less drunk now than simply dizzy, to his computer. He didn't know what else to do. Maybe he was hoping for an e-mail, since he hadn't checked this afternoon (and in fact, he didn't check near as often as he used to weeks ago when e-mail had been new and special...). Maybe he was hoping for a miracle.

But just this once, he got both.


	12. Chapter 12

**Disclaimer:** Not my characters, and I make no money from them.  
**AN:** Unbeta'd.

Chapter 12

"Jack, my boss here wants to send me to a conference in Washington D.C. in January. The American Astronomical Society Conference. Do you think you can come? I have checked with another graduate student I will be rooming with, Yusef. He will let you room with us as long as we don't do anything while he is in the room. I know it would cost a lot of money for you to come out there. Maybe you could take a train. I really miss you, Jack. It would mean a lot to me, and please tell me if there is something I can do to help you make it.

Ennis del Mar"

Jack stared at the e-mail a long time before he had to remove himself to the bathroom in anticipation of seeing Ennis in just a few short months. Yusef or not, they'd find their time together. Of that he was dead certain.

So taken with the haze of satiation and the afterglow of hopes for the future was Jack that he entirely forgot to answer Ennis's e-mail until morning. When he woke up, though, that was his very first thought, and he jolted out of bed, half-dressed, past Teng in the kitchen eating his cereal, and to the computer, to answer.

"ennis, fuck yes i'll figure something out. I fucking love you and you made my fucking day.

Jack."

He meant every word of it, but now it was the figuring out that Jack had to do. That whole week it was on his mind. He and Ennis continued to exchange bland e-mails about weather and classes, but always at the end was some little thing about the trip, Jack's newest price for some train, or what did people wear to the conference, or else asking Ennis about the poster Ennis was planning to present there, the hotel they were staying at, the logistics of splitting it. Jack had a million questions, and he jotted down packing lists when his professors were boring. He couldn't leave fast enough even though he didn't yet have half the money he needed for the trip.

In the end the plane turned out to be the cheapest at one hundred and sixty one dollars from Denver. Jack could take a Greyhound bus from Laramie to Denver pretty cheaply and quickly, so that turned out to be his plan. He loaded up on nice clothes for the conference. According to Ennis's fellow students, no suits were required, but khakis and collared shirts were the most casual sort of things undergrads should expect to get away with.

And in the rush of trip planning, and trying to focus on his classes around it, Jack forgot completely about Randy, and about Spectrum. Or maybe he wanted to forget. Because the truth was his body'd been right there, ready and willing to do something that he didn't know that Ennis would have forgiven him for doing. Whatever happened, Jack knew that he wasn't going to tell Ennis what happened with Randy. After all, nothing'd happened with Randy, so there was nothing to tell. Or so Jack told himself, but if that was really true, Jack didn't know why the thought sometimes kept him up at night.

At last the end of the semester arrived. Jack had picked up extra hours at the dining hall all fall to earn the extra money for the trip, and he just barely had enough, although it meant that he couldn't afford a Christmas present for Ennis. He hoped that showing up in D.C. was enough. His grades had slipped a little on account of the extra work, but they weren't too bad-- A's and B's, though it was a problem that the A's were in his non-technical classes and the B's were in his technical classes, but Jack had never pretended to be a genius. Finals week was hell, but, as happened every finals week, the physics students banded together and studied together and pulled themselves through by their bootstraps together. Their final grades were somehow group victories. Jack felt like a liability, his mind elsewhere, but the other students were patient with him. In return he proofread a couple essays for those who weren't so good in English classes. Jack was developing a reputation for having some skill in that department.

And then Jack was alone with Teng, the week of Christmas coming on strong in a fit of wind and snow from the west. Teng wasn't going home for Christmas, though he and his girlfriend had some plans in mind with friends, leaving Jack completely alone on Christmas Eve.

But not really, because his phone rang early in the day.

"Hello?"

"Hey." Ennis's voice sounded comforting and warm, but also lonely and cold. Jack wasn't sure how it could be both at the same time, so near and so far away.

"Hey there."

"Uh, Merry Christmas."

"You too."

"You got any plans?"

"Nope, not any."

"How'd finals go?"

"I fucking hate finals week."

"You and every other student."

"Yours?"

"They went."

"Yeah, well, I bet at least you passed yours," Jack laughed.

Ennis laughed too, though neither was really sure if it had been a joke.

"You all set for the conference?," Jack asked after a moment.

"Uh," Ennis laughed a little nervously. "Not really. Still finishing up the poster."

"Guess that's normal," Jack answered. He had no idea whether it was or not, but he sure that Ennis was more than competent, so it couldn't be too abnormal. Jack suggested that they exchange the particulars of their flight information, and he took down all of Ennis's on a piece of printer paper which he then folded and stuck in his back pocket. He planned to keep it with him, as if the paper itself was a Christmas present.

After that they seemed to have run out of things to say. Jack stretched the phone cord to the couch and slumped against it, sighing. "Well, I guess you want to go, right?"

Ennis grunted, though Jack couldn't tell what he meant by that.

"You in the lounge?"

"Yeah," Ennis sighed.

"Too bad." And Jack meant it, because he was already unbuttoning his jeans.

"How's that?"

But Ennis got the message soon as Jack's breathing sped up to a panted fervor against the phone receiver, and Jack heard Ennis making some strangled noises on the other end of the line. Ennis tried to stop him with some hushed and scolding, "Jack, Jack," warnings.

"I can't stop, Ennis. I got to do this. I'm gonna shoot with you right on the line in a public place."

"Jack--" Ennis sounded almost like he was going to cry.

"Miss-- you-- so-- much-- Ennis."

"Uuuhm."

And then Jack couldn't talk any more, only moan and grunt incoherently until he came, calling Ennis's name across the apartment, the phone line, and the ocean.

Not three seconds later the line went dead without a goodbye, but Jack didn't mind. Warmed from the inside out, he knew that in some bathroom or dorm room in Germany, Ennis del Mar was wringing it out thinking about what he'd just done, and it felt like even though the phone line wasn't still connected, they were, always, forever and a day.

* * *

It was Jack's first plane flight, and that fact almost made up for the miserable hours he'd spent in a stinking bus. The airport smelled like no place he'd been, like carpet that had seen more travelers come and go than Jack could imagine if he'd spent his life thinking of it, and he tried to imagine that it wasn't an airport, but a spaceport, ushering him into his future, to the man he loved, and to a conference on astronomy at the Nation's Capital on the back of a giant silver bird.

He waited patiently in the ticket line, putting his bag on the scale with a smile. He waited patiently in the security line, carefully laying out all the contents of his pockets in a little tray, and putting his carry-on on the conveyor to move through the X-ray. He waited patiently at the gate until his row number was called, wanting to follow every rule. He watched the stewardess-- flight attendant-- whatever their politically correct name was this week, with rapt attention as she showed him how to put on his oxygen mask before assisting the person next to him. He noted the nearest exit and read the safety card in the seat back in front of him, all with a smile.

But, finally, the moment had arrived, and, buckled in as Jack imagined an astronaut might buckle into the space shuttle, Jack sat perfectly straight against the seat and looked out the window. He felt every G with elation, every turn of the plane with excitement. Once they were airborne, he didn't tear his eyes away from the window until the flight attendant asked him multiple times for his drink order.

A plastic cup of Coke later, Jack was back to scanning the cloud-tops, noting the unprecedented blueness of the sky, the way his ears popped, every little detail of the flight cataloged as if it might be his last. When they hit turbulence and the plane shook, Jack didn't even care. His only thought was that, if the plane crashed now, he'd die in a way he couldn't find a single fault with, falling from the back of a silver bird from space.

At last though, they descended, and Jack found he loved that more than the climb. The dips the plane took were rather like driving a hilly country road, and Jack had always loved that. The braking of the plane was noisy, but that was good too. Spaceships should make noise as well. And finally, there he was, on the ground at the end of his direct flight. There he was on the ground in Washington D.C., and Ennis was out there somewhere on the ground before him.

Jack's patience evaporated, and suddenly he could not get off the plane fast enough. It wasn't a spaceship and this wasn't a spaceport, but none of that mattered because the real fantasy was still ahead of him somewhere in the city on the real, live ground.

* * *

Ennis sat in the lobby, fingering the edge of his polo shirt. He'd been sitting here for over an hour, and he was damned tired. Flying across the ocean didn't get easier just 'cause you'd done it once. After they'd arrived and settled, Yusef went looking for the hotel bar, and Ennis found a chair with a good sight of the front desk. He tried not to fidget or look suspicious, tried to blend in, as he watched a lot of scientists filter into the lobby. Many were in suits, but just as many wore jeans and T-shirts. A lot seemed to know each other. They broke into small groups here and there to catch up on old times or to talk about making their way to a restaurant. It was dinnertime in D.C., which meant it was way past dinnertime for Ennis and he was barely awake and starving to death, just about. But hunger was no new thing to him so he stood it. He was used to more than one day of studying or working where he would just forget to eat entirely.

He was nearly asleep against the back of the armchair when a familiar-- but not _so_ familiar after all-- figure entered the lobby, wearing the same backpack he remembered, and dragging a bag Ennis even knew. Without seeing him, Jack went up to the front desk and started talking to the blonde man there. Ennis found himself frozen, afraid to watch because of the way his vision was fading and his heart was pounding at the sight, but equally afraid to turn away from such a beautiful view.

Ennis rose to his feet and walked up to the counter, standing carefully behind Jack. He didn't trust himself not to do something foolish, suddenly. But Jack seemed to sense him there, because after he was handed a key, he turned around, and broke into all smiles. Ennis felt suddenly breathless. Jack's lips parted. His tongue drew a wet line from one corner to the middle, and his eyes watched Ennis's lips. Ennis was certain it was unconscious, but the sight was driving Ennis wild.

"I, uh, room's upstairs," Ennis stammered out.

"Yeah." Jack broke his lip-gaze to look down at his key. "It says 356. That's usually upstairs, I think."

The feeble attempt at humor was lost on Ennis, who jerked Jack's bag away from him and bee-lined it straight to the bank of elevators in the middle of the lobby.

The hotel had three ten-floor towers. All three towers were connected on the ground floor and on a mezzanine, but the insides of the towers were empty, with doors on all sides of the square towers facing towards the center across brass railings. Hanging plants decorated every railing, and a fountain skirted the elevators. The hotel was no cheap place, and no place like either of them had been before. Ennis watch Jack take in the sight. He didn't care much for the luxury himself. It made him feel awkward and out of place. But he could see Jack's eyes light up like he'd come to some level of importance. Ennis smiled to watch it happen.

They rode in a glass elevator only up to the third floor, and then followed the square wall around until they found their room. Ennis swiped the key and held the door aside while Jack went in.

Jack looked around for a moment. The room was dark, and nothing special except that it was a hotel room. It wasn't the first they shared, Ennis remembered, thinking of their football trip to Texas, but it was the nicer of the two.

"Which bed is yours?," Jack asked breathlessly.

That was all the cue Ennis needed. He had the sense enough to flick the deadbolt on the door before he ripped at Jack's shirt buttons from behind, then spun him around and laid his own lips again those that had been silently begging for this since the lobby. Jack didn't resist. Ennis took a second to stare into his eyes, but what he saw in that blue depth was too much, and Ennis shut his own eyes against Jack's as his hands worked Jack's fly without an ounce of progress. He was lost in a world of fumbling, needful _love_. "Oh God," Ennis moaned.

"Ennis," Jack breathed gently. Jack grasped Ennis's wrist and pulled his hand away from the fly where it was still scrambling. "Ennis," Jack leaned against his cheek, "I'm here. Calm down, alright."

Ennis felt a smile, more genuine than he'd felt in months, stretch his features.

Jack, hands calm though damp with sweat, moved under Ennis's shirt and under Ennis's own pants with considerably more dexterity. "Easy," Jack whispered. "It's alright."

Ennis dove in and planted another hard kiss, aiming for Jack's lips, but Jack dove away at the last possible moment and the kiss went wide, hitting Jack in the cheek. Jack chuckled.

Then Ennis had had enough. He pushed them both to the bed. Jack, not complaining, pulled his own pants down on the way. Kicking and fumbling and laughing and snorting, they fought to get each other's shirts and underwear off, to get the upper hand. Ennis liked the feel of Jack's strong legs, covered in wiry dark hair, wrapped around his own as Jack held him down, whispering, "I am not that easy to pin, Ennis!"

Ennis laughed. "Like hell. I got two inches on you."

Jack put a tanned hand around his own cut dick. "Not where it counts, friend."

Ennis tried to hide his mischievous smile. "Don't see how that counts at all."

"Oh yeah?"

"Yeah. You don't usually do nothing with it."

"I been doing a lot of something with it since you've been gone," Jack snorted.

"That wasn't what I meant."

"I know it. You offering."

"Didn't say that."

"You afraid of that extra inch, huh?," Jack's laugh was wicked.

"Ain't afraid," Ennis protested.

Jack leaned in close, grasping the hotel lotion from the bedside table as he did so. He held the lotion against Ennis's forehead like a cold pack for an injury. "Oh yeah? Why don't you prove it?"

Ennis froze, and their eyes met, but the moment of stillness flowed directly into movement as Jack worked to enter and bury himself in Ennis. Ennis rocked back, grunting, his hand working himself. He could see the muscles in Jack's arms shake as they drew the seconds out to minutes, wanting to come both quickly and never at all.

"Ennis," Jack choked, "I'm gonna--"

"Jack." Ennis clamped a hand on Jack's shoulder, and they came together, gripping and twisting each other in tightening palms. Neither drew a breath for an unbearably beautiful handful of seconds, until Jack made a noise like a sob, and Ennis started sucking in mouthful of thick air, and--

The doorknob jiggled.

Jack and Ennis froze, holding their breath, Jack still buried but softening within Ennis.

"Ennis," an accented voice called.

"God dammit," Ennis hissed, pulling away from Jack. They snatched up as much of their clothes as they could grasp and ran for the bathroom. Jack was laughing like a crazy idiot, and Ennis wondered if maybe he'd gone a little screwy or something.

"Ennis! Open up! What the heck?"

"Uh, just... just hold on!" Ennis pushed Jack into the bathroom with his clothes, and pulled on his own jeans and shirt. He slammed the bathroom door and swung open the room door.

"Ennis." Yusef looked mad. "Why'd you lock me out? And why's your shirt on inside out?"

Ennis looked down and cursed under his breath.

The bathroom door creeked open, and a dressed Jack emerged.

"Uh." Ennis started.

"_Oh_," Yusef answered his own question, but he didn't look any less angry.

"Yusef, this is Jack. Jack, Yusef is a grad student out in Germany."

"Nice to meet you," Jack nodded sheepishly, but he didn't offer his hand.

"Yeah," Yusef answered. "Anyway, if you all are done, I can barely stay awake. I'm going to bed."

"Yup."

"I haven't had dinner. I was thinking of food," Jack offered, more to Ennis than to Yusef.

"Ain't eaten myself."

Yusef tumbled, fully-dressed without a word, into his bed, while Jack and Ennis got cleaned up and stepped into the brightly-lit hallway to find a meal and eat it together for the first time in five months.


	13. Chapter 13

**Disclaimer:** Not my characters, and I make no money from them.  
**AN:** Thanks to jennydcf for the beta! This chapter is shorter, so apologies for that.

Chapter 13

There was a sports bar right in the hotel, and that's where they ended up, even though they were both too young to drink. They split a meat pizza and both ate in voracious silence, though Ennis caught himself slippin' guilty, shy grins across the table. Jack returned them in kind. Finally, when they were both lickin' their fingers and draining the last of their sodas, Jack leaned back and sighed. "You finish your poster alright?"

Ennis grimaced and shook his head. "I finished it. Don't know how good it is, though."

"Aww, I'm sure it's fine."

"I got to stand by it all day Tuesday." Ennis meant it almost as an apology.

Jack shrugged. "You probably don't have to stand by it _all_ day."

Ennis shrugged in return and yawned wide.

Jack smiled affectionately, blinking at Ennis under those long eyelashes of his. The expression on his face made Ennis dizzy. "It's got to be a god-awful hour in your time. Come on, cowboy, let's put you to bed."

Ennis paid with a credit card. He hadn't even had one until very recently, just for this trip, 'cause he was going to get reimbursed. He'd just tell his adviser he'd eaten the whole pizza himself. It was under his per diem, so as long as he and Jack didn't eat a lot and split their food, there was no reason Jack had to spend much of his own money.

Jack wiped his smiling lips one last time with a napkin and dropped down off the stool at their table. Ennis followed him silently out of the bar and up to the bank of elevators.

Ennis did not appreciate the elevators at this particular hotel. They were all glass and looked out on the entire lobby and all the room entrances. Anyone could have seen them riding together at any time. Ennis started to feel a little itchy. He and Jack were going to have to keep their space this week, even though it was their only week together. They couldn't be on display in front of so many people. It made Ennis sick to think on having to keep away from Jack when they had so little time. It would be nicer if they could be someplace private, away from all these people, for a week. But neither of them had the money to be doing something like that.

Jack unlocked the hotel room with the key he'd gotten. Yusef was sound asleep and snoring lightly, passed out on his bed. Without asking or telling, Ennis pulled a pillow and blanket off of his bed and dropped them onto the floor in the little sliver of open space between the bed and the window that overlooked the city. Jack didn't even seem surprised, let alone hurt. Ennis couldn't trust himself to lay near Jack and keep his hands to himself, so this was how it was going to have to be while Yusef was in the room. They undressed and redressed in utter silence. As if the time they'd been apart had not existed, they were of one mind, understanding the motions and actions of the other. Over a year now they'd been together, whether apart or not, and Ennis could feel the comfortable weight of each of those days as he made Jack's bed on the floor. _I'll make it up to you, Jack. I'm sorry I have to lay you low, bud._

Ennis, for his part, contented himself with the wet spot under his body. He laid on it on purpose, though the fluids were his own, as a reminder of the time just hours ago when he and Jack had shared this bed.

But, even as he drifted into sleep, Ennis felt a hand snake up to wrap around his own. "I missed you," Jack whispered.

Ennis rolled towards the edge and gripped Jack's hand tightly under the weight of his body. That warm hand was better than any wet spot, so he clung to it, instead.

* * *

"Jesus H., just share the bed." Jack awoke to the sensation of a pillow hitting him square in the jaw.

"The fuck?" He yanked his hand out of Ennis's death-grip to wrestle free of the sheets.

"Ennis, time to get up." Yusef kicked Ennis's bed a couple times. Ennis groaned and pulled his head out from under a pillow.

Jack's attention was torn between morning-rampage Yusef, sleepy-beautiful Ennis, and his completely numb hand slowly coming back to life in an excruciatingly painful manner. "Ennis, get up." Jack poked Ennis's T-shirt-covered shoulder with his good hand, and Ennis pulled himself up to stare at Jack.

"Jack?"

"Yeah, I'm still here. Time to get up, lazy-bones."

Ennis groaned.

"Yeah, I know."

Jack climbed out of 'bed', grabbed some clothes, and tossed a pillow grumpily back at Yusef on his way to the bathroom.

A half hour later, all three of them were fully-clothed and ready to go down for the first real day of the conference. Now, after a night of the joy of reunion, they had to face the realities of a day of going to real life work with their thinking caps on.

Jack spent all of the opening speech quietly sifting through his program while Ennis shot him evil eyes. There were free bagels near the posters. Jack and Ennis stood in line side by side, not out of place in a room of mostly men, where undergraduates seemed to stick close together. Yusef went off on his own, knowing a person here or there. Jack perused the poster aisles, feigning interest most of the time. Ennis did the same. They didn't walk next to each other, but they kept each other in sight.

Finally, the sessions started, and Jack followed Ennis into one of his choosing. That was a mistake. An hour later he was snoring his way through talk after talk on supersymmetry. How Ennis could even understand this stuff was beyond him. Ennis jabbed him hard with an elbow. When the speaker finished, Jack trickled out with a small crowd. He waited a moment, but Ennis didn't follow, so he moved on to find something more to his interests.

Jack spent most of the rest of the morning sitting through talks about comets. A lot of it was spectroscopy so not the most interesting thing in the world, but at last he could understand what was being said unlike in supersymmetry. He didn't have the guts to ask any questions of the speakers, though. When lunchtime came, he found Ennis lingering outside of the room where Jack'd left him, and together they headed back to the sports bar, along with dozens of other astronomers.

The afternoon went much the same way, only this time they discussed where to meet. Jack hadn't planned on spending his week with Ennis so... apart from Ennis, but the fact was that their academic interests couldn't be more different. He couldn't stay awake through the talks Ennis enjoyed, and Ennis wouldn't be interested in comets, gamma ray bursts, colliding galaxies, or any of the million things Jack found arrested his interest. He wondered how Ennis could be so focused on just one thing, when so many topics filled Jack with at least some sense of awe. So many topics except for supersymmetry and string theory and general relativity, that is. The only awe that filled him with was awe that anyone could stay awake.

They split a sub for dinner, once again at the sports bar, though Jack took the opportunity to suggest that they expand their horizons beyond the hotel and attempt to see the city. Ennis grunted and ate in silence. Jack didn't want to spend this week fighting at any cost, so the sports bar it was.

Jack found that by the time they got back to their hotel room, he was exhausted way earlier than he usually began to feel tired. Must be all the learning. Inside, the room was empty-- no Yusef. Ennis looked around nervously. Jack followed his eyes, wondering what he was thinking.

"C'mere," Ennis breathed in a husky voice, not meeting Jack's eyes. He pulled Jack close and, in an instant, it was as if they were breathing fire into each other's mouths. The distance they had maintained from each other all day collapsed in one calamitous roar as each brought their arms around--

Ennis pulled back abruptly and glanced at the clock. Jack saw that it read eight. Ennis was staring at it, his brows furrowed. Jack could watch needs and misgivings battling each other out on his face. Ennis thought he kept his feelings hidden, but they were wide-opened to anyone who knew just where to look.

"You think Yusef will be back here soon?," Jack asked tenderly.

"Doubt it," Ennis whispered. "He saw some friends here. Likes to go out drinking."

"So..."

"Just... don't like having to worry."

"I understand." Jack watched the shadows on Ennis's face. "Maybe we have a 'Do Not Disturb' sign? In case he comes back early."

"Might as well put out a 'We're Fuckin' sign," Ennis grumbled.

"Right now, if I had one, I might," Jack grinned.

"Everyone in the goddamn hotel can see it."

"Except they're all debating something scientific or out getting drunk. No one's reading door signs. Sometimes it also means you're napping, you know."

"To Yusef it won't."

"That's the point."

Ennis sighed in frustration.

"You've only got a couple choices here, Ennis. Way I see it, we have one week. You're going to have to work with Yusef, but you're not going to have to live with him after."

That got Jack's intended effect, as a smile played at the corner of Ennis's lip. "Put the goddamn sign up if you want." Ennis was playing grumpy, but he knew he was about to get some, and that was a good mood all on its own.

Jack wasted no time high-tailing it to the door. He'd never used a 'Do Not Disturb' before, but he was happy enough to do so now.


	14. Chapter 14

**Disclaimer:** Not my characters, and I make no money from them.  
**AN:** Unbeta'd.

Chapter 14

Ennis dreamt that he was somewhere warm and safe, wonderful. A door opened and people were coming and going, but he was too wrapped up in Jack to notice. Someone was smoking something, but his nose simply buried itself more deeply into Jack's scent to edge away from the other sharp smell. A light went on, then got darker, but he hid his eyes in Jack's skin to block it out, to turn it the shade of golden-red that light exudes through skin. Whatever place it was, it was a place where he felt wonderful.

Ennis woke up as soon as the alarm buzzer sounded at seven in the morning. He didn't immediately know where he was, but he knew Jack was there with him, so he gripped more tightly to the warm body.

Jack made a groan in his throat. "Turn off that goddamn noise."

Ennis smiled and released Jack, twisting out of a tangle of blankets to move towards the alarm. That's right, they were in a hotel room at the AAS, and--

"Fuck!" Ennis hissed, jumping out of bed, before realizing he was stark naked and pulling some covers up over him. Yusef was passed out across his own bed, fully-dressed, along with three other people: two guys and one chick. They were all sleeping soundly. The girl was curled up in a little ball, clutching the pillow under her head. Her short, dark hair stood out against the whiteness of the sheets. A few beer bottles and some bottles of harder liquors stood proudly on the bedside table. Littered between the bottles, the stubs of a couple joints left ashen lines on the marble. Ennis slammed the alarm off and covered himself with a pillow as he ran for the bathroom, not the least bit surprised that the alarm hadn't woken Yusef and his friends.

Ennis leaned heavily against the door to catch his breath before gulping hasty mouthfuls of water. He wasn't sure what bothered him the most: their lack of decorum at a scientific conference, the fact that Yusef hadn't asked him if it was alright to bring people back here, or the fact that all of those people had been privy to the view of Jack and Ennis naked and together in bed. They'd been under the blankets, but the meaning of their post-coital embrace couldn't be mistaken, not even under the haze of pot and drink, Ennis was sure. He knew that ought to bother him most of all.

But somehow it didn't. I did bother him, but his real anger wasn't from his shame, but from the fact that no one had _asked_ him if it'd be ok to have a party here. They'd put up a sign, hadn't they? Yusef didn't seem to care. He should a had the common fucking decency to care when a man wanted some time alone, or not alone, as the case may be. Though Ennis had to admit, Yusef did have a right to come back to his own room at the end of the night. But drunk and high and carting a group of people? Though Ennis would be a shitload more embarrassed if Yusef had come home alone and sober, maybe. At least this way they'd both made some mistakes last night, one way or another.

Ennis took the opportunity of being naked in the bathroom to shower. He wrapped himself in a towel and retrieved his clothes quickly and self-consciously from a room full of still-sleeping forms. Once dressed, he roused Jack. Jack mumbled and blinked at the party in the other bed, but didn't say anything, preparing himself for the day with a grogginess Ennis couldn't share in, Ennis's own adrenaline racing through his system with the power of a thousand cups of coffee. He was remembering his dream in snippets and undercurrents, understanding slowly that it was not a dream, but a half-awake memory of the party that had happened here last night while he and Jack had curled sexually around each other in a room full of people they were going to want to work with for the rest of their careers. Sickness lurched up from his stomach, late and unexpected.

Eventually Jack finished dressing and Ennis pushed him into the hall. "Jack..." But it was plain to see they couldn't talk there, in that openness.

"What?" Jack was looking up at him with clouded, innocent eyes.

Ennis shook his head and walked away, tucking his black polo shirt into his khaki pants.

"You know they didn't see anything, Ennis." Jack shoved his own hands deep into the pockets of his own khakis. He was wearing a green sweater with a white shirt underneath, and the color combination made him look like the outside, the wild land Ennis had known as a little boy, and not these stuffy hotel hallway and science lectures. Ennis suddenly felt he couldn't breath.

"They saw enough."

Jack shrugged and made no more of it as they walked to the elevators. The clock was ticking on their work day.

Once in the glass enclosure, a thought occurred to Ennis. "Think we should have woken them up?"

"Shit no. They need to sleep that off."

"They got to go to the talks, though."

"No one's taking roll."

Ennis nodded. He would have liked to sleep in some morning, himself. He didn't think he should; his advisor had paid good money for him to come all the way out here to talk hard science, and wasting that money by sleepin' in bed wasn't right.

They got more bagels and browsed more posters. Ennis envied Jack's ease in talking to the professors. He could always waltz right up and ask them about their research. Ennis edged close enough to tell that Jack's current conversation, on whether brown dwarfs could be dark matter, was not in the least simplistic. Jack might not get the best grades, but damn! Ennis's jaw dropped and he beamed with pride at how smart Jack was at the same time he blushed with shame over not having realized it before.

"Think you'd still be able to detect some percentage. I mean, say they're real cool, they should still emit in the infrared," Jack was saying.

"What if they're_real_ cool?" said a tall professor with gangly arms, a tuft of blond hair, and smiling eyes.

"Still, there'd be some distribution around impossibly-cool, yeah? So you'd see some percentage as being warm enough to see, and that distribution would be a Gaussian so you'd know how many there are..." Jack shrugged, his eyes wide with insecurity, ready to be shot down. Ennis's heart ached.

The professor grinned. "Yeah, and it's just not enough, though most brown dwarfs aren't found that way. Kelu-1 was found in a wide-field survey like that..." the professor pointed back towards his poster, and Ennis found himself stepping closer to see what was being pointed to.

The professor looked up when Ennis's shadow fell on him. "Hi there." The older man smiled politely, but went back to explaining his poster to Jack as if Jack were the important one here. Ennis hadn't ever thought about it, but in scientific settings, he was used to being addressed, Jack watching him. This was different, backwards.

Jack asked questions. The professor answered, addressing them both, but it was Jack's questions he was answering, and Ennis didn't even understand the questions well, let alone the answers. Jack was asking about finding planets around other stars, as best as Ennis could understand, using interferometry or coronagraphs versus searching the spectra of stars for blueshifts and redshifts from the orbit of a hot, big planet. He was using words like "hot Jupiter" and "extinction." Ennis's eyes glazed over.

His mind snapped back to when he heard Jack's next question. "So, uh, you work back at the University of Wyoming? I'm a student there. So is Ennis here."

"Yeah? In astronomy?"

"Yeah. And physics. Ennis is just in physics." Jack nodded his head towards Ennis, and the way it was said made Ennis feel inadequate. "Though he researches astronomy-related things," Jack amended. "GR, mostly."

"What do you research?" The professor couldn't give a crap what the silent boy who hadn't given a shit about his poster researched.

"Uh, I don't... I just work in the dining hall." Jack smiled like an idiot.

The professor lit up with a genuine grin and grabbed a card out of his breast pocket. "Why don't you send me an e-mail when we get back. I have some new data coming in and I'm sure there's an undergrad project hiding in there somewhere."

Jack beamed. "Thanks."

"No problem."

Jack nodded and walked away with a spring in his step. Ennis couldn't help but smile in pride. He'd watched the performance and the best part was, there hadn't been one. Jack had been really interested in what the prof had to say. If he did research for that man, no doubt he'd be happy doing it.

"Well," Ennis smiled over at Jack.

Jack smiled back. "Yeah. Hell yeah!"

"It'll pay better than the dining hall."

"Get me into grad school, too. Hey, look at this! _The Belief Structures of Physics and Astronomy Majors_. What the hell. They studied what people_believe?_ Why?"

Luckily the owner of the poster wasn't around. Ennis shrugged and stepped closer, skimming the poster. "Says the same kind of people are likely to be physics majors, not that bein' in physics makes 'em that way."

"Yeah, well."

"You n' me couldn't be more different."

Jack laughed. "Maybe they meant that everyone in physics is, you know..."

"Jack..."

"Alright, alright. Do you have any sessions you wanted to see? Maybe we can learn to compromise so I don't have to sit through your boring stuff."

Ennis thought of protesting, of insisting that he'd come here to learn about his field more and he should be doing that, but he though of Yusef hungover in bed and figured that he couldn't be in more trouble than Yusef if his advisor found out. Besides, he'd been thinking of Jack as just his guest, but Jack had just shown Ennis that he had just as much right to be here. Ennis was ashamed that he hadn't seen that before, but now he did, so he would do better.

"Yeah, let me see. Which ones do you want to go to?" They hovered over the same program, pointing to sessions, until they'd made a decision of which to go to together. Their second day was even more enjoyable than their first together.

The rest of the week flew in a dizzy blur: posters, sessions, conversations, questions, invited speakers. They managed to grab dinner together each time, though in the end they never wandered from the sports bar. It was convenient and cheap and good enough. When Ennis had his poster session, Jack flitted about reading the others, checking back now and then to see how Ennis was doing. Ennis seemed to have plenty of questions, though he looked uncomfortable as fuck fielding them. That put him on par with about half the scientists there, scientists not having an extreme tendency to be social butterflies and all. They skipped the ball; to expensive, and neither had the clothes for it anyway. Yusef went, and they used the time to deepen their intimacy beyond the half hour they'd been getting here-and-there for a couple days. Ennis's per diem stretched to accommodate Jack, though Jack was pretty sure there was something illegal about doing that. He wasn't about to complain, since the alternative was not eating at all.

And, like that, all too soon, the conference was coming to a close. The lobby was filled with scientists chatting and checking out, talking about conferences and meetings where they would see each other next, inviting each other to give talks or joking about some mutual acquaintances they were likely to run into.

Jack and Ennis both sat silently, stark contrast to the buzz of voices, on a bench in the lobby. Their bags were packed and in front of them, the intimate goodbyes they could steal already exchanged. They'd checked out and killed time, but Jack's plane was leaving first and he couldn't put off his departure any more if he had any hope of wanting to get home. Truthfully, he would have stayed in D.C. if it meant he could stay with Ennis, but it didn't. Ennis was leaving in five hours anyway, and Jack did not have the money to move his flight for such a small reason.

"Four more months. Damn," Jack breathed.

"Yeah." Ennis sounded as breathlessly blue as Jack felt. That helped a bit.

"Well. Maybe we can do this again next year," Jack smiled.

Ennis tried his best, a warm flicker spreading across his lips. "Maybe."

Jack stood and grabbed his bad, checked that his wallet was on him, sighed. "See you in May, I guess."

Ennis stood and nodded, but he seemed to be shielding his eyes from the room. He didn't want anyone to see the sadness delineated there, Jack guessed. He understood all too well.

But there was nothing left to do, so he grabbed his bag and walked, one foot in front of the other, into the chilly afternoon air. He was on his way home.


	15. Chapter 15

**Disclaimer:** Not my characters, and I make no money from them.  
**AN:** Unbeta'd. This chapter is hot off the press, so let me know if there's a problem. Also, it's been a while since I've written in this universe so I hope my memory is doing ok.

Chapter 15

Jack's folks drove down during his winter break. It was a surprise, but not quite a welcome one. Still, it was best that they came now while Ennis was away. The boredom and long-ignored anger that Jack felt in his parents' presence could even be welcomed as a distraction from the loneliness that he found more acutely now, despite that he had seen Ennis recently and that the gulf of time until they were back together, back _living_ together, was half as long as it had been the last time he'd said goodbye to Ennis. His parents were a distraction in much the same way a physics exam was a distraction, but hey, that'd got him through the last semester, so what the hell.

The visit passed quickly enough without any damage except from maybe Jack grinding his teeth too much. Jack showed them around campus, showed them where he worked. His father grumbled something about Jack getting an education to spread mustard, he didn't listen too hard, and then he proudly brought them back for dinner in his apartment. He even cooked it, though it was just some pasta with white sauce. His mother smiled to watch him doing for himself, but his dad grunted that in his day they didn't get sauce out of a jar. Jack shrugged it off. In his dad's day they also didn't use e-mail or have color TVs, so who the hell cared to go back to those ways of thinking?

"This is a nice little place for a student," Jack's mother remarked. Truth was, the apartment was about the size of the downstairs of their house at home, small as that was, and good size for any apartment anywhere near campus. As far as Jack knew, it was sheer luck Ennis had gotten it, though most of the spaciousness was in the living room and not in the one average-sized bedroom, the bathroom, or the smallish kitchen that was, still, big enough to put a table in and so nothing to complain about. He could see all sort of thoughts behind her eyes, but he couldn't read them. He wondered if she felt jealousy or loneliness or what. "How d'you afford such a nice place?"

Jack fumbled trying to muster up an explanation, since his parents knew exactly how much money _they_ were sending him, and he'd already told him what crap he made at work. Teng, who had been introduced to Jack's parents that morning, hadn't been following Jack or his parents' conversations too closely, but he was typing away in the living room on something and turned towards the table on a dime.

"If you're worried that Jack isn't paying his share," Teng spoke up, "you don't have to. I mean, he's kind of my landlord, but Ennis pays some of his share."

Jack found his mouth was hanging open not unlike that of a fish found high and dry on the bottom of a boat. There was no way to signal to Teng, no way to put him off.

"Ennis?" Jack's dad grunted.

But Teng was a smart guy, and he seemed to notice Jack's little panic, because his cheeks had gone a little red and he answered, "Oh, he's the actual landlord."

"Actual?" Jack's father's eyes squinted.

"What I mean," Teng cleared his throat, "is that Ennis is subletting to us, but since he and Jack are friends, he gave Jack a discount. I'm just some guy they dragged in off the street to cover the other half," he laughed. Jack noticed that his chuckle was empty of any nervousness and didn't sound at all forced. Maybe because he really _was_ just dragged in for that purpose?

"Well," Jack spoke up as he started to gather everyone's dirty dishes, not meeting anyone's eyes, "you're a friend now." He nodded resolutely, realizing, very suddenly, actually, that Teng was one of only a very few people who knew anything about what Jack and Ennis shared, and that, before and since Teng had put those pieces together, he'd acted just the same towards Jack. He was nothing but considerate, and he'd just pulled Jack out of a bind. At the end of Teng's time here in their apartment, he would have trouble thinking of the grad student as anything but a friend.

A little more tense conversation was exchanged that night over a pie Jack had bought at the grocery store. Teng suffered Jack's family, his eyes rolling a mile a minute at some of Jack's father's ignorant proclamations, but never where the old man could see them. To Jack, it felt nice having someone around who could see as well as he could what a jackass his father was. It was like a vindication, not that he'd doubted that his father was a jackass. Finally, Jack's parents said goodbye and drove back off again. That one day seemed to last a week, but now it was over. If that's how it was now, Jack couldn't imagine what kind of relationship he would have with his folks further down the road. When he imagined further down the road, though, _everything_ became a blur. There was so much he hadn't decided on or didn't know about, it made him ill.

Ennis had called while Jack's parents were visiting after dinner, but Teng had answered and had had the good sense not to alert Jack's folks as to who was on the phone. Jack's heart raced as he heard Teng say, "he, uh, he has his family here, can I take a message?" all the while knowing who it was that Teng must be taking a message for. Now that the folks were gone, Teng seemed to knowingly relinquish the computer when Jack'd raced to his e-mail to drop a line:

"e, my folks were here, making my life a living hell. Sorry about missing your call. They just left thank God. i'm going to bed, call you tomorow-j"

The next day they spoke, neither long enough nor intimately enough, but it was what they had. Sometimes they would sit with silence on the line, just listening to each other's breathing. Once, Ennis had fallen asleep out in his lounge or wherever, and Jack had had to yell into the phone to wake him. Life relaxed into that steady, even pace. Teng was working hard on his research or whatever it was that grad students did-- Jack didn't really understand, while Jack was pulling winter-semester hours at the dining hall.

Those work hours were utter hell, too. Campus was plenty short of students over the winter. A variety of freshmen-level classes were offered, and students that needed or wanted could get ahead or try to catch up over winter break. A few of the dorms stayed open, but not many. More importantly for Jack, the one dining facility that serviced those open dorms was understaffed at these times, most of its workers home for Christmas and New Year's and the rest of the month of January. Those of them that were left behind-- and especially those like Jack who were not taking classes-- were scheduled up to triple shifts, opening and closing in a single day. More than once he dragged himself home through snow and wind and sleet at the end of the day only to fall asleep fully-dressed on the couch. Once, he even got up and went back to work without changing. Whatever, who cared? At least he'd make some money, even at the meager six dollars an hour they were paying him.

One Tuesday he got off of work unusually early at three in the afternoon and walked back to the apartment through a smattering of flurries at below-zero temps. Coming inside, he wondered what he should do with this extra time, and his eyes rested on his backpack from D.C. He hadn't unpacked, not really. He'd dug out the underwear, some pants, stuff he needed, but he'd been wearing mostly work shirts so all his nicer shirts were still packed along with his good pair of shoes. He wandered over to it and dumped the whole suitcase onto his bed to see what was in there, what needed to be thrown into his dirty clothes pile or whatever. Still, the work seemed daunting. He did it without much thought or care, stacking up a nice pile for laundry, but failing at actually getting the motivation to _wash_ the clothes. No one was here to give a damn what he smelled like anyway.

Jack slouched into a sofa in the living room after booting his PlayStation, and let the thrill and automation of a First Person Shooter erase his concerns.

Some time later-- Jack couldn't say how much, though he did know how many levels it had been-- Teng came in looking tired and beat. "Your home early," he said, but his words didn't carry much bemusement; they seemed more a statement of fact.

Jack paused and leaned back further. "You got any dinner plans."

Teng grunted, and Jack smiled thinking about how like Ennis Teng could be when he was tired. Not the rest of the time, though. "What did you have in mind?"

"I dunno, order a pizza?"

"Sounds good."

It was the most roommate-like thing they'd done in their months together, ordering a delivery pizza and splitting the money for it. Jack plunked down in the love seat and Teng in the matching sofa, both worn hard and bought used by Ennis. The three larges were set on the coffee table-- just a cheap wooden thing. The pizza was enough to be meals well into the week, but they should probably divvy the slices first.

"Hey," Jack said, suddenly raising his head to Teng, "thanks for the way you handled my parents last week. Seemed... seemed close." Jack shrugged and swallowed an enormous bite of pepperoni.

Teng shrugged. "I got you into that pile, I thought it was the least I could do to get you out."

"You didn't quite get me in," Jack shook his head, answering with his mouth still full. he swallowed hard and reached for the can of Pepsi on the table in front of him. Teng watched him until he continued. "My parents don't know about my living situation, but they do know about how little I make with Dining Services," Jack laughed. "I was pretty stupid to think they'd never put the two together."

Teng laughed. "So, it's obvious they don't... _know_, you know? How many people _do_ know about your 'living situation'?" Teng made quotes in the air to emphasize Jack's odd turn of phrase.

Jack shrugged and answered around a mouthful of crust. "There's you. One of the physics profs. My friend Randy. Well, ex-friend--"

"What happened _there_?"

"Not worth going into. And also, hey, does Ennis count."

"No," Teng answered, deadpan.

"Does your girlfriend know?"

Teng tilted back his head, thinking. "I... I'm not sure. I... maybe. I don't know. No, I don't think I've ever brought it up."

Jack nodded. "That makes three."

Teng laughed hard and suddenly. "You guys."

"What?" Jack felt he was being laughed _at_.

"I met Ennis for all of ten minutes, but with the way you two carry on-- the phone, the e-mails, the trip to D.C.-- I don't think you'll be breaking up so soon that you can keep it to three. People are going to figure out. Hell, people _might_ have figured out for all you know. It's not like you came out and told me."

Jack didn't say anything, just looked down at his third slice of pizza, feeling suddenly disheartened though he couldn't put his finger on exactly why that was.

"If you're serious, you're going to have to have a plan."

"A plan?" Jack looked up, suddenly very conscious of the roughly eight years Teng had on him.

"Do you want people to find out, or do you want to tell them? Who do you want to be in the know, and who don't you want, stuff like that."

"Uh."

"Yeah." Teng smiled like he'd just played a marvelous practical joke, partitioned the pizza equally without saying a thing about it, and stood to take his box to the kitchen. He disappeared into the bedroom and didn't return.

Jack ate a couple more slices of pizza in an unusual, thoughtful silence. Normally he would have flipped on the TV, radio, something, but just now... Oh, there was the people on the bus trip, some of them knew, like Lureen. It nearly sounded like an excuse in Jack's head, holding up one gal he wasn't likely to see again as a shield against an onslaught of self-disappointment. He didn't think he could handle people knowing. Worse was the idea of telling them. let them think what they would, but the last thing in the world Jack wanted was to go around telling people that he wasn't normal like they all thought he was.

Ennis rested his head in his palm and stared at the computer screen in front of him. He tried to clear his head and think about the problem again. When he likewise couldn't think of a solution, he tried to think of it a different way-- and failed. His frustrations were mounting by the minute. He took a deep breath and sat up, subconsciously putting space between him and the screen.

"Liz?" His voice was quiet and he hated the way he sounded-- uncertain, inferior.

"What's the matter?" Ennis turned to see Liz's head popping out from behind her enormous monitor.

"Can I, uh, ask you somethin'? I mean, if you've got a minute."

"Sure." She walked over, acting as though Ennis hadn't imposed in the least. She was short and looked fragile, with a full head of light blonde hair cropped shoulder-length and tucked behind her ears. "What's up?" Also, she spoke with such an accent. She'd said she was Australian, and to Ennis it sounded lyrical. He could have listened a good while to her speak.

"I just... this program keeps crashing around here and I can't figure out why. I've looked and looked--"

"Sometimes you just need another eye to see what you overlook."

"That's what I mean," he trailed off. She smelled like oranges, leaning so close over his shoulder.

"Well, why don't you e-mail me the path name, and I'll give it a look."

"Sure, uh..." he had never e-mailed Liz before. "What's your e-mail again?" He felt he should know. Everyone in the lab knew everyone else's handles, and he knew he'd e-mailed her back when he first got here-- his first e-mail, in fact.

"Abeers."

He must have made a face of some sort, surprised as he was by the first letter. He'd expected an E or an L. She must have seen whatever look he made, because she laughed and said, "Elizabeth's not my first name."

"Oh."

"My first name is so old-fashioned and uncommon." He nose wrinkled.

He nodded. He understood something about uncommon first names. "What is it?" He wasn't sure why he cared, but the question seemed a natural place to go.

She laughed again, only this time it was more like a giggle-- the most girlish noise he'd ever heard her make. she stuck out a hand to her lab-mate she'd known for months now as if they were just being introduced. "Alma Elizabeth Beers. Nice to meet you, Ennis del Mar."


	16. Chapter 16

**Disclaimer:** Not my characters, and I make no money from them.  
**AN:** Unbeta'd. 100 hot off the press, don't burn yourselves-- or me, 'cause I didn't even proofread it. No smex in this chapter, but there'll be something in the next, promise.

Chapter 16

That wasn't when things got bad. Ennis got through his programming error and careened straight through the beginning of his classes without any worries. Greg put him on a new project with Johann and Liz, and it was new and interesting for Ennis to work as a part of a group. He'd never liked teamwork, but he'd never been part of a team where he was the dead weight dragging them down. He wasn't trying to be, he was just trying to learn, and Liz and Johann had plenty of patience with him. He didn't mind the group work much when it was with a real smart group.

The real problems started about a week into that project, when his daily e-mail from Jack wasn't how it usually was. Jack normally sent good news or casual whining that made Ennis feel like he was at home. Ennis liked to imagine they were sitting at the kitchen table just talking about their day. Well, Ennis talked about his day. Jack usually bitched about his own, mostly.

This one was different, though.

_ennis,_

I been doing a lot of thinking. You know, Teng and I were talking a few weeks ago, and since then I been making new friends in my new classes, and i also got the old ones. Teng was like, what are you going to do be a secret with Ennis forever? Well what are we going to do, ennis? You propared to tell all your friends that you aren't who they think, that you really like to go home and sleep with a guy, that you're all gay and... shit, i don't know. I don't know what to do. I've been trying not to panic about this, but it's like I need to talk to someone about it. Teng is a good friend, but he's not like he's about to give me any advice. If anything sometimes I feel like he gets amusement out of seeing me uneasy about all this, but i think he's a good guy.

What i'm trying to ask is, how long are we a secret? Forever?

there's this group on campus here for people like us, for gay people I mean. When I first thought of that word weeks ago and myself, I thought they didn't go together and never would, but i've been trying to use it more to myself, used it a couple times to Teng. You think i could? I think i could. I mean, i've got friends who i think are real friends, and i wanna go to these meetings and see if they can give me some advice.

Don't mean to be going through all of this when you are not here. i don't know, maybe you have been ging through something in germany too. We dno't talk about it.

i don't know what to do.

jack

The first thing Ennis noticed about the e-mail was that it was the first in several weeks in which Jack hadn't said something, anything, to encourage Ennis-- something about love or being together or waiting for him to get home, anything. Ennis felt a headache blossoming at the base of his skull.

The next thing he thought of was what the e-mail didn't say, but danced around. Jack had all but said he was ready to be publicly gay, and the thought made Ennis's stomach clench violently. He couldn't say why. Here in Germany people knew, but not in Wyoming. Here in Germany it seemed like most people thought it was okay, but that was for sure not the case in Wyoming. For a moment he felt he was in a free fall, because if Jack did anything publicly, Ennis would be caught in the repercussions. He felt anger start to snake up from his belly.

He probably should have waited until it had dissipated before hitting the reply button. He probably should have just called instead. But Ennis had come up under his older brother, been taught to swing hard and fast and get it over with, so before he knew what he was doing, he had hit the send button. He stormed away from his computer, hungry and in search of dinner, hoping it wasn't meatloaf night once again.

Jack sat the computer. He didn't quite know what to do, having never been in this situation before. He wondered for a moment if he could reach back in time and swipe his last e-mail from its flow, but he also knew he wouldn't if he could. If he couldn't share the things that troubled him with his boyfriend, who the hell was he _supposed_ to share them with.

Whatever his emotions were, they must have shown on his face, 'cause Teng walked through the room to get something off the coffee table but paused by Jack. "You ok?"

"Huh? Oh, yeah. No problem," Jack lied.

Teng nodded and went back to his room. Jack watched him carry a book under his arm. Homework, that's what he should be doing. He didn't know how he was supposed to concentrate on that shit now, though.

He turned back to the screen and reread the e-mail, hoping maybe it would say something different this time, but it didn't.

_Jack,_

If you want what you do to be known in Wyoming, you're asking for trouble. People know here in Germany, but this is a different place. You go ahead and jump off that cliff, but if you do, you should know I won't be coming with you. You can be gay in your own apartment, but it won't be in mine.

Let me know if I need to find someone else to sublet to.

Ennis del Mar

Jack stared forever, until the screen had burned a white square onto his eyes. That didn't really matter, though, because the words were burned in deeper already. Jack wasn't going to cry, he wasn't, he wasn't.

The shower started up and Jack knew he was alone. He lasted about thirty seconds before the sob-- proving itself more powerful than his will-- escaped on its own with a hot sprinkling of tears. What could have caused this, how they could be here-- the sense of it defied him. How was he supposed to answer this e-mail? How _could_ he answer?

Jack got up and kicked the edge of the sofa, hissing in pain when the hard wooden frame kicked back. he bee-lined it to the fridge to grab a cold beer, and sought his bed after that. Tonight he was just going to try and sleep the e-mail away. Tomorrow could fucking deal with its own fucking self, and Ennis del Mar with it.

"Party?" Ennis frowned.

"Just a little going away party," Johann clarified as if it made some kind of difference in Ennis's mind.

"Who's going away?" He frowned deeper, smelling a skunk here.

"Sam."

"Who's that?"

"Another student here. You don't know him," Yusef added, feeling a need to involve himself in any conversation, even though he was working quietly on the other side of the room.

"If I don't know him, why should I go?"

"Oh man, that's lame," Yusef answered, as if it explained everything.

"Lots of people going don't know him," Liz offered. "That's not the point. It's a _party_. You're _expected_ to come."

Her statement made no sense to Ennis, and that fact must have been written plainly on his face, because Liz sighed in exasperation. "Look, if you're going to stay anywhere near astronomy in your work, you've got to relax and go to parties."

"Yeah," Yusef laughed, "astronomers are like the jocks of physics."

Ennis turned to glower at Yusef, remembering their time in D.C. He didn't doubt that Yusef, at least, believed himself the captain of some invisible football team.

"What he means," Johann's soothing accent busted in, "is that astronomy is a small community and a lot of business is accomplished in social settings. You're _always_ on a job interview, and many people will think more highly of you if you fit in with the crowd and are social." With a pointed look at Yusef, he added, "But not too much so."

Ennis had to bite down on a laugh, even in his present gloomy disposition.

"So you're coming?" Liz asked.

Ennis just shrugged, seeing by now that he was cornered and wasn't going to be given a choice.

Jack slipped into the back of the room a good ten minutes after the meeting started. His intent to come here had been fueled by Ennis's bigoted and heartless reaction rather than squashed, as Ennis would have hoped. Still, he felt like a thief, looking carefully in all directions before stealing into the back of the room, head ducked. A woman was up front talking about the group budget like it was any other student group. Her eyes briefly flashed to him as he came in, but, almost as if she sensed that he didn't want to be seen, she avoided glancing in his direction for the rest of her accounting of the group's funds before she sat back down.

"Alright," another woman spoke up, but didn't stand, when the first woman sat. "We have seven hundred dollars this semester. What do we want to do with it?"

Jack watched, nearly mesmerized by the normalcy of it all. They talked about maybe going bowling, or having a party. There seemed to be a lot of support for that last 'cause these kids felt like they couldn't go to normal college parties and be themselves with their boyfriends and girlfriends. Jack saw the point. If everyone else got to get drunk and suck face all night in some trashed living room, why not him too? There was only about twenty people there, but that would sure enough be a good small party, and maybe some of them had people, like Jack had, who didn't come. He was glad about what he saw. He'd been worried it'd be a kind of place for people to hook up.

After they talked about the social stuff, they talked about other activities. One girl knew about an AIDS walk in Denver and was wondering if they could get a van to go down there and participate. She seemed real firm and chocked up about the idea, and for the first time Jack sat back and realized that AIDS existed and was in his world. He didn't think he or Ennis had much to worry about, but Jack hadn't known Ennis's past that first time. The thought was sobering as he listened to the girl talking about where they could stay, maybe they could camp. She had such emotion in her voice that he knew AIDS was more real in her world than it was in his. He wondered about her. Madeline was her name, and she had close-cropped black hair that wove itself into tight curls, looking like an Afro, but on a white girl, 'cause she was a white as a sheet of paper.

They must have decided something about the trip while Jack was distracted, 'cause now the woman who seemed to be in charge-- the one who had been sitting earlier-- was bringing out something.

Jack thought he was too lucky when he first saw what it was, but a second glance proved he was not mistaken-- _food_! There was a plate of finger sandwiches, one of cookies, and a couple two-liters with cups. He hadn't realized he was in for free dinner when he'd come, confused and mostly worried about what he would find. But these kids were just like any other kids on campus, and he was ashamed that he'd ever thought differently. This was the first time Jack had ever been even slightly active in any student group, so when people started wandering up to the food, he went ahead and invited himself to do the same.

Ennis groaned and slumped down in the chilly late-winter air. He leaned hard against the stair railing of the brick townhouse, knowing that once again he'd drunk too much. It wasn't a hobby, just something he did when he was in emotional distress, and it seemed like he'd spent most of his time in Germany in some form of emotional distress.

"Hey, you okay man?" Ennis looked over and, once the world stopped spinning, he saw Yusef's head hanging above him. "You don't look so good." Before Ennis answered, though in truth he never planned to answer, Yusef had disappeared back inside the door.

By the time it opened again, the fresh air had had a positive effect already. He gazed over towards the door, expecting to find Yusef again, or someone he didn't know simply leaving the party, but instead there was Liz, her wool coat pulled close around her. She frowned down at him for a while before actually sitting on the step next to him.

"Are you okay?" Her voice was soft and worried.

Ennis grunted.

"I'm sorry if we dragged you to this party when you didn't want to come."

He shook his head. "Didn't no one drag me."

She nodded and seemed to disappear further into her jacket, shivering.

Ennis wasn't sure where it came from, just lonely he guessed, but he suddenly became conscious of the six or seven inches between himself and Liz. He moved closer and draper an arm around her. She smiled up and thanked him with a wavering smile, but her gaze soon returned to the empty street in front of the house. Her thoughts were elsewhere, even Ennis could tell. She looked like she was in pain. It was by pure instinct that he leaned over and touched his lips to her hairline to leave something between a murmur and a kiss.

The ramifications were immediate, though. Liz froze and pulled away. The look she gave him as she looked up at him seemed to see right through him. Her mouth opened as if she were groping for words. It was a few moments before she found them.

"Ennis... Ennis, first of all, you're gay, unless you've forgotten!? Second of all, you're taken, and if Yusef's story is to be trusted, you're not just _a little bit_ taken."

Ennis looked away and flushed bright red. He hadn't thought that whatever happened in D.C. would become the talk of the department, but in retrospect, a day never went by without rumors wafting through the room, so he should have realized... But if he had realized, likely he would never... And then he would have missed out on... Missed out that... time.

Ennis's eyes stung and his gut clenched. It wasn't just a friendly kiss he'd lain on Liz, and she'd known it. There was something more behind it, a neediness that Liz would not have been able to help. He didn't even know when the tears started falling, but he tried to clamp his fingers over his eyes to stop them, gasping for breath.

"Oh, shit. Honey..." Liz rubbed circles on his back. He wasn't even wearing a coat and he only now noticed the cold. "You must be really drunk, huh?" Her voice was full of pity, and she sounded like she was talking to a child, but for whatever reason it only made his tears fall faster. "Something wrong back home?" The only response he could muster was a gulp of air. "Oh man. Come on. Let's go back inside and get you some water."


	17. Chapter 17

**Disclaimer:** Not my characters, and I make no money from them.  
**AN:** Unbeta'd so please have mercy and let me know of errors. I know I promised smex, but I lied. I found this was a good breaking point, though it wasn't my originally-intended one. Next chapter for sure.

Chapter 17

Jack loaded up his plate but kept his head down, hoping not to be noticed. No such luck.

"You're new here." The leader-girl came up to him. She was pretty: thin, but not very, with huge-ass boobs and a rounded hips and ass. Jack was certainly not beyond appreciation. She was black, with dark skin and a large smile that extended to her voice. "My name is Sara." She extended a hand.

"Jack," he clasped hers back.

He expected her to ask more personal questions first, ask about his sex life for some reason, but instead the first thing she asked him was, "So what's your major?"

He smiled like he'd just been officially welcomed into the club. The last of his misgivings disappeared as he nodded and answered, "Astronomy."

"Oh cool!"

"Yeah," Jack nodded and even blushed a little. It was the typical response.

"Do you want to sign our roster? That way you'll get e-mails about events and stuff."

"Uh, sure," he shrugged. Seemed harmless enough.

She scurried away, giving Jack time to down a finger sandwich, and came back with a clipboard. He put his name, e-mail, phone number.

"What year are you in?" She seemed to be genuinely interested in getting to know Jack.

"Oh, hmm. Sophomore. But this is just my third semester."

"Oh, ok," she nodded. "Do you want to meet some of our other members?"

"Uh... ok." he honestly wasn't sure how he felt about it, but Sara had seemed nice. He tried on for size in his mind that she was a girl who slept with girls, but he found he didn't really care 'cause he was too nervous about being here and too interested in his cookie to think about it right now.

The first person who chanced by was the paper-white afro girl. Sara reached out and tapped her.

"Oh!" The girl jumped and whirled around, staring at Sara with large brown eyes.

"Dawn, this is Jack. Jack, Dawn."

Dawn blushed in red splotches, and there was no way to miss it against the whiteness of her skin. "Oh, hi."

"Hi," Jack said back. An awkward moment passed before Jack tried to make conversation. "So, uh, are you two, you know..."

Both Dawn and Sara laughed at this. "No no," answered Sara. "Dawn's straight."

"But it's not the first time I've been asked that question," Dawn added in her mouse-like voice.

"Oh. Well, I hope I'm not, you know, intruding too much. I'm just wondering... why would a straight person want to come here?"

Dawn's face fell, Sara sighed, and Jack wondered if he'd said something wrong. Even though these were supposedly his people just 'cause he liked to sleep with a guy, he had no idea how their little group functioned, what were the right and wrong things to say. He was probably going around offending everyone without even knowing it.

Sara recovered first with a smile. "Dawn's what we call and ally. She's a straight person who... you know, is sympathetic and wants to help."

"Oh, uh, ok," Jack nodded. "I could see you wanted to help. That was real great, that, uh, AIDS thing." He hopes the compliment would undo whatever damage he'd done.

Dawn grimaced a little bit. "Well, there's some personal history there." Jack didn't comment, but he wasn't the least bit surprised. He didn't expect her to tell a total stranger jack shit, but it seemed she thought differently, 'cause she continued after taking a deep breath.

"I was raised by my Uncle Nate. He's gay and lives with my Uncle Will, for-- I don't know, a long time, so they both raised me. But Uncle Will got AIDS a few years ago."

"I'm sorry to hear that," Jack responded, meeting her dark eyes with his own.

"He's doing ok. I mean, he doesn't really have AIDS yet, he has HIV which'll give him AIDS."

"Oh. Guess I don't know how that works."

Dawn smiled weakly and answered, "Hope you never have to learn," with a little laugh.

"If it's not too personal, I'm just curious, how'd you end up living with your uncle?"

She nodded. "My folks died when I was little, only three."

"Oh. Sorry. It's good you had someone to raise you. A friend of mine is an orphan but he had to go into foster care."

Dawn was still nodding, but Sara, who'd been listening patiently through a story she'd no doubt heard before, interrupted at this point to demonstrate her shrewdness. "Friend, Jack?"

Caught! Jack met Sara's eyes and smiled.

"You're with us now, you can call him whatever you want to," she giggled at his naivete.

"Alright," Jack shrugged. "Um, boyfriend, I guess."

"Yeah, are you serious?' Dawn asked. She was clearly coming out of her shell.

Jack froze before he spoke, remembering too well Ennis's last e-mail. He choked and looked into the middle-distance nowhere trying to answer properly. An easy lie would be the most convenient now, but after hearing Dawn spill he life's story, he couldn't do it. He liked these girls and maybe would want to hang out with them again, so he finally stumbled upon a truth he could bear. "Used to be. I mean, we were living together, but he..." Jack sighed. "He's studying abroad, and things have been stressed since then. Just now... well, he's not too happy that I got the idea to come here."

He looked up at them. Dawn's dark eyes were swimming in sympathy. Sara's head was tilted and she was biting her lower lip, looking for all the world like a woman with a plan. She cemented that impression when she nodded and responded, "Yeah. Yeah, you should talk to Chris."

"Huh?"

"Come with me." They bid their farewells to Dawn, who said she had an exam to study for, and Sara dragged him to where three guys were sitting in chairs chatting.

"Guys, this is Jack."

The nodded and said their "heys". Jack wasn't crazy about being dragged over like a student in need of a teacher, but he'd come to trust Sara already.

"This is Paul, Matty, and Chris."

Jack took them in as quickly as he could: Paul with his western shirt but wide smile, Matty with long hair dyed black and wearing black clothes, and tall dark-haired Chris with the deep voice and painted fingernails. Besides his nails, he seemed perfectly... normal.

"Chris, Jack has a home life situation you might be able to give him some advice on."

"Oh yeah?" Jack didn't like Chris's large, condescending smile from the get-go. He decided he wanted out of the situation.

"Hey, I'd love to talk, but I gotta get back and do my homework."

"Oh, oh yeah, sorry." Sara looked genuinely embarrassed.

"No problem," he answered. "I had a good time. You can expect to see me back at the next meeting."

Sara beamed him an enthusiastic smile and waved as he took to the cold streets, but at least he was no longer hungry.

Ennis guessed he'd only gotten around to discussing the subject with Liz 'cause he didn't have another friend here outside of the lab, and he sure as hell didn't plan on talking to his roommate Ryan. They'd only grown increasingly avoidant of each other as time dragged on. And he spilled his guts that drunken party night because he needed to, and he knew he wouldn't do it sober. They'd taken an upstairs bedroom like a couple planning an indecent romp, but Ennis sat up against the headboard, Liz sitting next to him and leaning on his shoulder. The touches felt nothing but platonic now to Ennis. They could be nothing else the way he felt himself worried sick about how things were going with Jack.

"So?" Liz asked.

Ennis inhaled and tilted his head towards the ceiling.

"What'd you do?"

Ennis jumped and scowled down at her. "What makes you think I did anything wrong?"

She shrugged. "Tell me you didn't."

He sighed again. "Just sent an e-mail I shouldn't've."

"What can be so bad about an e-mail?" Her brow furrowed.

"Well, Jack said he wanted to go to this meeting, and I don't want him ruinin' my reputation, so I told him if he goes to the meeting he better also be packing his bags."

"A meeting?"

"Like for... for gay kids." Ennis blushed and looked down, focusing on trying to pull off a bit of broken thumbnail instead of this conversation.

"You think he went?" Liz sounded genuinely curious and alarmed now, no longer playing the counselor.

"Well hell yeah he went. Best way for me to make sure he got there was to do what I done." His head still floated a bit and he wanted to go to sleep.

"So wait. Are you mad that he went?"

Ennis shrugged, but his face screwing up on itself gave away the surge of emotion he was barely containing. He choked out in a cracking voice, "'M not mad at... Just-- I just miss 'im."

"Hmm." Liz made a sad noise in her throat, rolling her head around on Ennis's shoulder. For the first time, it occurred to him that she'd been drinking as well. "If only we all had the same problem."

"Huh?"

"Love sickness. It must be the best kind of sickness there is. Or at least, the cure is very nice." She smiled up at the ceiling and Ennis wondered if she was remembering something.

"Yeah. Uh."

She waved him off like she was sensing all his fears coming to the surface. "Just call him."

"You don't understand, that e-mail--"

"It doesn't matter, you have to call him anyway. You can't have those kind of conversations over e-mail."

"What kind?"

"_Those_ kind," she answered, as if that explained anything.

Ennis sat with his hands clasped between his bent knees, not thinking of anything in particular but feeling generally miserable.

"Anyway." Liz sat up and yawned. "I'm going home. Do you know how to get back to your dorm? Do you want to get a cab with me?"

Ennis shook his head. "Rather walk." It was about a mile and the fresh, cool air would do him good, he figured.

"Ok. See you on Monday." Liz opened and close the bedroom door behind her, and the room stilled to silence as if she had never been there in the first place. Ennis heaved a sigh and lay back on the bed to think. He was exhausted, but not sleepy; his thoughts were racing much too quickly for sleep. Finally, when he became too frustrated with the circles they were running in, he hauled himself up out of the bed, into his coat, and away from the party.

Garching was pretty any time of the day, but in the middle of the night on the verge of spring, the city felt like it was waiting for something and only by chance was Ennis being allowed to walk through it tonight. It was nearly four in the mourning, and the streets were deserted. Ennis walked through the town square, an odd mix of old building and new infrastructure, with a keen eye for the older buildings especially. He wasn't used to seeing anything like it in Wyoming. Maybe in D.C. they had things like this? He hadn't spent his time there exploring, though, so who knew? At least now his thoughts weren't running in the same self-destructive loops.

He passed down an alleyway that he suspected was a shortcut, and found that the buildings here were even older, though he was facing their backs. Some had houses behind houses, and lots of things were brick or whitewash. He saw the high arch of an old carriage house that now had modern garage doors set where horses once had gone in and out. He wondered about the people who lived there. They must've lived such different lives from him. Even the grad students in his lab-- hell, Liz was from Australia. Wasn't that like about the furthest you could get from Wyoming before you start coming back around again. Ennis laughed to himself at the thought, though he wasn't sure what was funny. Just that, there were so many people everywhere, it was kind of a wonder that anyone ever gave a damn about anyone else. It was a fucking miracle that anyone gave a damn about Ennis del Mar, and if there was something bigger than a miracle, that had to be to blame for the fact that someone more than cared a damn, someone was ready to go in with Ennis on the all-of-it. They'd never really spoken about it, but it was there between him and Jack, in the way they understood each other and talked about what made good houses and what made good cars not like they were each going to have a house, but like they were going to share one. Ennis said he's like to have horses, and Jack said he'd like to stay near mountains, and Ennis said finding a little cheap land near the mountains good for building a modest house and barn wasn't hard. Jack answered that he didn't want anything more than a modest house anyway, 'cause who has the time to clean the big mother fuckers? Ennis laughed again, with no one to hear him but the night.

He did eventually arrive back at his work, his alley-work having proven a true shortcut. The walk actually took him less than a half hour, but there was something so peaceful about the city at night that he almost wished it had taken longer. Looking at the clock that hung right in the main lobby of his hall, Ennis did the nearly-automatic calculations in his head. Seven thirty on a Friday night. Good chance Ennis was SOL. He knew he wouldn't sleep until he tried, though.


	18. Chapter 18

**Disclaimer:** Not my characters, and I make no money from them.  
**AN:** Unbeta'd but well proofread this time! Let it not be said I don't deliver on a promise wink

Chapter 18

Jack sat at the sofa eating his dining hall takeout. It was the last food he wanted, 'cause he worked there, after all. It was a sandwich no less, made at his own sandwich counter, but he'd been coming back from there, so it made the most sense. As much as he hated half the people he worked with, the other half were really nice and just as unhappy there as he was, so Eleanor hadn't even rung him up as he left, meaning, in addition to easy, the roast beef and cheddar was free.

He had his legs kicked up on the sofa as well, watching some stupid movie-- _True Lies_ with that Schwarzenegger guy who'd been so awesome in _Terminator_ and _T-2_-- when the phone rang behind him in the kitchen. He looked over the back of the couch like the phone might walk over to him, but no such luck. He didn't move from his spot; didn't care enough about whoever was on the other end of the line to make the effort.

A minute later, though, the sound began again. Jack groaned and ignored it again, already suspecting that simply pretending the phone didn't exist was not going to work tonight.

He found he was more than right when the thing sounded a third time. "Shiiiit," Jack groaned, moving from the couch and shuffling his socked feet over to the kitchen. He picked up the receiver in the middle of the fifth or six ring and said only, "Yeah?"

There was no immediate answer, and that, more than anything, let Jack know who was calling. His heart usually leaped into his chest when Ennis called, but now his stomach sank and he regretted the roast beef. This was going to be nasty and he wanted no part of it tonight.

"Uh, Jack, it's me," Ennis finally spoke.

He sounded tired, and Jack was momentarily distracted by something more pragmatic. "What time is it over there?"

Ennis laughed. They were both trying to hold off the inevitable argument with meaningless conversation. "Late. Or early depending on how you lookit it."

"You sober?"

"Mostly."

Initial formalities over with, Jack's mind clicked back to business. He felt himself in the right, so no reason to delay his doom. "K. Why're you calling?"

"Jack..." Ennis floundered a bit, "You see I... I was at-- no no. I saw that, I mean..." He heaved a sigh of frustration, but Jack was not about to help him.

"You want me to move out, then?" Jack said it flatly, no emotions betraying the sickness he felt when he uttered that sentence.

"Jesus! No!"

"Then why are you calling?"

"Jack..." Ennis sighed again. "Listen, I was wrong to send you that e-mail. I was just not thinking straight. I guess I was angry--"

"What right do you have to be angry--"

"Would you just shut up a second? This is all new to me, too. As new as it is to you, you know. Jesus Christ, Jack, I miss you so bad... Sometimes I just want to pack it all in and head back home." His voice was tight and Jack could tell he was holding back tears. Something in Jack broke at that, and he lost focus of the main issue at hand.

"Sometimes," Ennis resumed quietly, "I wonder if it would hurt less if we weren't together. But I guess I don't see how that would stop my feelings."

"Oh Ennis, I wish I could fix this whole damn situation, but I don't even know what situation I'm talking about. I wish we could live in a blissful little cloud somewhere, and maybe money would just rain from the sky." His voice dripped with sarcastic amusement and he even let loose a thin laugh.

Ennis returned with a watery chuckle. They sat on the line in silence before Jack's feet, back on the ground, opened the topic again. "What did you mean by that e-mail, Ennis?"

Ennis sighed. Jack could just imagine him pacing or biting a hangnail or digging his thumbnail into something: his nervous habits that somehow had become as soothing to Jack as they were to Ennis.

"I guess... I guess I just... Well, shit, Jack, for a minute there it felt like you were, I dunno, moving on without me."

"What the hell are you talking about?"

"You're all ready to move to San Francisco, want to leave me behind. It feels like you're wanting to go on to a life where I'm not... not going to be able to follow."

Jack let that sink in, working his mind around it, trying to remember what he had said to Ennis in the first place and how it could be taken that way. Yeah, he could see it. Ennis studied abroad and Jack suddenly is calling himself gay and going to meetings and talking about all sorts of forward-moving plans that Ennis can't even be in on if he wanted to be, 'cause he was too far away to be involved. Jack swallowed.

"Ennis... It feels kinda the same for me, you know? Your friends over there know about you, and about us, but my friends here don't know shit. Sometimes I get to thinking how come you get that and I don't? Maybe my friends would be as cool with it as yours? What makes you think my friends are somehow more... less..., I don't know, they could be just as cool as your friends, but you basically said you'd leave me if I even tried to find out."

Jack heard Ennis exhale long and slow on the other end of the line. "Sorry."

"Besides, what the hell was that? Every time we have a fight, are you going to threaten to kick me out? Maybe sometimes you even _will_? Should I be getting a place of my own so that you can't hold this damned apartment up as some kind of leverage against me?"

"Oh, Jesus..." Ennis moaned. "Jack, if I could take that back, you have got to know I would."

"That isn't an answer Ennis."

Ennis didn't speak. Jack waited in the ensuing silence before Ennis said, "I wouldn't ever kick you out Jack, and I'm only just ashamed of myself for making the threat. I hope... I hope I learned something and don't do it again, you know? But if I do, I got to tell you now that I don't mean it. Don't go, please? I guess... I guess sometimes I don't think really hard before I do something."

"You think?" Jack bit out sarcastically.

"Hey, no need to make me feel worse. I feel bad enough, I guess."

"So you say."

The conversation stalled, Jack wrestling with whether or not to forgive Ennis so easily, with a single phone call, or not. He wanted the fight to be over, but he also had some self-respect and had to stand up for himself sometimes. But was that pride worth losing his relationship over?

"Hey, you go to that meeting?" Ennis asked quietly, breaking the meditative air.

"Fuck yes, I went. You got a problem with that?"

"No, no. Jack...," Ennis seemed to be pleading for understanding. "I figured you would go, 'specially after I told you not to," he laughed. Even Jack interrupted the line with a little snort. "I was just curious how it was, what all went on. I'm just asking about it..." Again that pleading voice. Jack could not evade Ennis when he was begging.

"It was nice. Pretty normal for any student group, I guess. They talked about their budget and about events they were gonna do. Then there were snacks, and I made a couple friends. Both girls," Jack was quick to add, "one's straight, I don't think the other is."

"Why would a straight girl come to that kind of meeting?" Ennis asked, confusion clouding his voice.

Jack laughed. "They can. I mean, anyone can. It's not just a gay social club, Ennis, they do activities to improve the lives of people where they see it needs to be done or whatever. Dawn, in particular, was raised by her gay uncles."

"Oh. Well, I don't see how my life needs to be improved. Except I could use more money. And to be closer to you, of course."

Jack smiled to himself, but he could also hear the smile in his voice. "That's sweet Ennis. You're a good apologizer, believe it or not."

"I didn't know that. Never had much cause to try."

"That I don't believe," Jack answered. "I think it's more likely you never had much cause to succeed."

"Mmm."

"It's the little things: being able to say the word 'boyfriend' without worrying how people will react, for example. Or, like, they're having a party."

"How does a party help people?" Ennis sounded not only speculative, but downright against th idea.

"Think about it, Ennis. What would it be like to go to a party where you wouldn't have to be careful how close you were standing, or you could dance with whoever you wanted, or kiss if you wanted to kiss."

"Huh. Think that would be dangerous. A person might forget to stop when they leave."

Jack sighed. "You don't think a night of freedom sounds exciting at all, do you."

Ennis was silent for a while on the other end of the line. "I'd go if you wanted me to."

"Well, that's not an option anyway 'cause, like you said, you're too far away."

"Huh."

"Maybe next semester, though, 'cause you'd best believe I'm going to remember that you said that."

Ennis was silent for a while, finally murmuring, "I know it."

"And you better not go ignoring me at the party either and think that's how you're going to get away with it."

Ennis made a noise. Jack figured he was getting pretty sleepy.

"No, man. You'd better be rubbing shoulders with me all night. And after you get drunk, I expect you to make out on the couch with me like a couple of college students should when they're dating, and then when that's to much, we're going to find a room in the house and fuck until we pass out. 'Cause we have a goddamn right to have as unholy a time as anyone else has at a frat party." Jack knew he sounded self-righteous, and he probably was.

"Jack, I wouldn't even do those things with a girl."

"Yeah? You sure? You never tried to kiss a girl or take her to a bedroom at a party?"

He sounded choked when he said, "I don't even go to parties."

"I'll give you that. But if you did go to parties and were to go in a bedroom wouldn't you want to do that with a guy?"

Ennis was long silent on the other end of the line, probably trying to figure out how to answer without saying the exact wrong thing. "If I had to go to a party an' be in a bedroom doing something with someone, I'd sure as hell want it to be you, Jack."

Jack paused, hearing the pain in Ennis's confession, almost like it was an apology. His heart started to hammer in his chest and his palms went cold. "What did you do?"

"Huh? I didn't do anything."

Jack said nothing. He didn't have to because he knew that, at the very least, Ennis didn't believe his own words. The tight strain in his throat and the plea in his voice said that for him. When he didn't challenge Ennis again, Ennis finally relented.

"I was drunk. It wasn't anything, but I tried to kiss a girl."

Jack didn't answer, his angry eyes boring holes into the wall.

"It didn't happen, though..." There was no urgency in Ennis's voice, only fatigue.

"Ennis..." Jack paused to gather his thoughts. "I don't know how much of this I can take. I don't know that you can expect me to sit here and let you do whatever the fuck you want out there, and, and--"

"Jack. Please, I know."

"Do you know? I feel like your-- I feel like I'm helpless and just waiting, waiting for-- Jesus, Ennis, if you're just going to leave me or kick me out--"

"I said I wouldn't. I said I wasn't. Jack..."

Jack winced at the continued pain in Ennis's voice. "Sorry. You just make yourself a little hard to trust. And right now, that's all we have."

Ennis didn't answer and they sat in silence until Jack asked, "You there?"

"Huh? Yeah."

"Well?"

"Can't we just start over? Like from when we left D.C.? Those were good times, weren't they?"

"...Yeah, they were."

Jack had slumped into a seat at the kitchen table, and he looked now into the middle distance, lost in memories that made him miss Ennis only more, that made him ache for Ennis like he had a physical wound. "Ennis?" He heard his voice turned suddenly quiet, maybe even tender.

"Yeah." Ennis, too, sounded profoundly relaxed all of a sudden.

"What were you thinking about? In particular."

"Mmm. In particular?" Jack could imagine Ennis blushing. "You want to know the truth, I was thinking about just eating pizza in the bar together, going to the talks together sometimes. I'm thinking like a girl, huh? Hey, you ever talk to that professor?"

Jack sighed. "It's in the works. I've been busy. Don't you want to know what I was thinking about?"

"I know what you're thinking about."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. And I'm trying not to think of it 'cause I'm in the public lounge."

"In the middle of the night, though. No one else is there." When Ennis didn't respond, Jack chuckled. "You wanna do it?"

"What?" Ennis snapped.

"We had a major fight. I think we just made up. Isn't this what we do next?" His voice held no humor, no teasing. He knew that it wasn't going to happen, that Ennis wouldn't give him even this, despite all the miles and arguments between them now.

"Shit," Ennis murmured, his voice pained. "Alright, I'm... I'm takin' my dick out here in the lounge. It's not so hard yet. Talk to me, huh?"

Jack's breath caught in his throat, his dick hardened to iron nearly instantaneously, and he was pawing one-handed at the button and zipper of his pants like they might have been filled with fire ants. In fact there was an altogether different type of wild animal living in there, and, pants and underwear around his knees, he turned and leaned over the chair to capture it in his one free hand. He tried to speak but already he was choked down to sputters and coughs.

"Jaaaaaack." It wasn't a sexual moan. It was a plea for togetherness. Jack tried to make his tongue answer, but he couldn't find very many words. He gave what he had.

"Ennis," he panted, the words struggling out, "love you, love you--"

"Jaaaaaack." Yeah, that one was clearly sexual. Jack smiled proudly to himself.

"You're going to make me come on a kitchen chair, oh my God, oh my God, soooon." The thrill of Ennis deciding to do this, deciding nearly on his own, and in the public lounge, was almost enough for Jack already.

"Fucking kitchen chair. I'm in the _lounge_." Ennis, panting now also, didn't know how that restatement of facts was adding to Jack's feverish sexual agony.

"Hard now?" Jack growled.

Ennis made a strangled noise. "If I was there, you'd find out just how hard I am when I shoved it down your throat."

"Uuuunh," Jack's words had taken on a rhythmic breathiness when he answered, "I'd be... happy... to take it."

"Jaaa--" Ennis made the one last noise before it twisted up into just a prolonged grunt.

"That... make you... come," Jack continued jerking off, his dick Mars-crimson. His war-sense flared with the still unresolved vestiges of his anger. "You... like... a _gay_ guy... to suck you offfffff?"

Ennis, words slurred and voice quiet, answered calmly, "I'd like any kind of guy to suck me off, as long as it's you..."

Jack managed to say through his own tightening throat and chest, "Shooting! Unh. Gonna cover this place in my come!" Then he cried out for real, and covered, if not the apartment, his hand and the chair and a bit of the kitchen floor. His senses returned to the sound of Ennis laughing happily.

"Huh? Wha?" Jack's chest still heaved in its need for air.

"I don't mind, but you better take up that decorating idea with Teng. He doesn't seem like the type."

Jack started with a low snicker that grew into a lazy belly laugh as the happiness of finally blowing off some sexual steam with Ennis hit his bloodstream. "I'll wait 'til you get home, then."

"Alright. I'll look forward."

"Just don't go kissing _girls_ at parties. Or guys. Or anyone."

Ennis laughed this time, though it was a nervous one. "I, uh, good luck with your classes and... those meetings."

"Yeah."

"Yeah. I'm sorry. I really am."

"I know. Me too for going through all this shit while you're away, like I said. But I don't plan on walking through campus in a bikini holding a sign, so stop acting like that's what I'm talking about. Other than that, I'm just over-all sorry that you aren't here."

"I can't believe you're not more sore at me over the e-mail."

"Ha! I know you!"

"Hmm. Sorry, I'm barely awake here. I've got to go. Plus I don't want to think about what this will cost."

Jack smiled to himself. Ennis lived in constant fear of losing a dollar here or there. "Alright. This Germany thing is really starting to weigh on my nerves, Ennis. It's a bitch. I'm doing my best to stand it, and you're only making it harder."

"I love you, Jack. We can do it."

"Not much longer."

"A few months. No more."

"No more. I love you too, Ennis. Goodnight."

"Night."

Jack heard Ennis reluctantly hang up. He set the phone in its cradle himself and only then drew up his pants. There was also a mess in the kitchen he knew he had better get up before Teng came home. But all in all, he felt soothed, and if he didn't force his attention too hard to the separation in time and distance before he could touch Ennis again, he felt downright jubilant.

When Jack was done cleaning, he picked his sandwich up and flopped back down on the couch to finish the movie. It seemed like nothing had changed, but Jack knew differently.


	19. Chapter 19

**Disclaimer:** Not my characters, and I make no money from them.  
**AN:** Unbeta'd.

Chapter 19

The change wasn't huge, not heralded by fanfare. It didn't involve anything life-changing, buying each other presents, or flying anywhere. Still, Jack noticed it all the same. He and Ennis used to exchange e-mails once a day, short and mundane. Now those little electronic ties between the two of them were flying back and forth. Every detail of their days was shared, jokes stockpiled for typing. Jack knew the weather in Munich and Ennis knew the page numbers of Jack's homework assignments. Inside jokes piled up, floating from e-mail to e-mail and disappearing before popping up several weeks later to make a cameo. Jack didn't think two people so far apart physically could be that close together in every other respect. Phone calls decreased in frequency and were now mostly Ennis calling Jack late at night-- early in the morning, for Ennis-- to repeat that public lounge activity that Jack was sure Ennis would rather do in private. Ennis didn't have much choice as to where the phone was located, and wasn't about to go without. Jack, on the other hand, had a phone in the bedroom, though he didn't think he fooled Teng much when he took his calls in there. Jack never made any real attempt to silence his own noises,. Teng didn't need a fancy education to know what was going on.

An on-going contention that remained between Jack and Ennis was Jack's foot-dragging about talking to the professor he'd met in D.C. Eventually Jack ran out of reasons not to-- or really, he ran up against all the pride he was losing to Ennis as Ennis thought him more and more of a coward, in Jack's own head, anyway-- and he wrote an e-mail to a different recipient: Dr. Andy Shepela.

Jack clung tightly to the folder on his lap and nodded in earnest at Dr. Shepela. It supposedly wasn't an interview. He'd e-mailed on the pretense of learning more about the professor's research, and he'd arrived with a slate of well-prepared questions. Nevertheless, Jack knew just as well as Dr. Shepela did that this was the game, the dance of the undergraduate student trying to attract a research adviser. Jack worked his plumage hard as shit; he went for the tough questions and took plenty of notes. When he ran out of questions, he thanked Dr. Shepela for his time.

"Call me Andy."

Jack nodded, trying not to let his emotions play across his face. The invitation was hardly different from being told he'd got the job, before it was even offered.

Jack waited while Andy continued expectedly. "I happen to have some money for an undergraduate research assistant."

"Oh really? I'm very interested in the position." Jack was fully aware that he hadn't been asked how interested he was. "Brown dwarfs are a real important link between planets and stars, and it's really cool what implications they might have for solar system formation." Jack figured that proving his interest in the subject couldn't hurt.

Andy nodded slowly. "There's not a project there yet. We have new data coming in-- I think I told you about it at the AAS?-- but until then, there's plenty of stuff to do."

Jack honestly wasn't sure at this point whether he was being offered a job or not. They were talking about specific tasks, so he was pretty sure... but if he acted sure, was he going to sound cocky?

"We're accumulating a huge database of all known data on brown dwarfs, for one," Andy continued. "That involves some programming. We want to make it accessible on-line to our collaborators and maybe eventually to other people in the field. And then once we get this new data, which will be before this time next year-- I forget the dates of our observations-- there'll be plenty of fields to do photometry in. We're getting the same field with Hubble and the Palomar 60-inch. I'm going to have to send some students out to Palomar to get the data when our time comes up. Who knows? Maybe you'll get to go." Andy's smile was tense, and Jack's hesitant, even though the idea of being on an actual observing trip out to California made him want to fuckin' shout for joy. Besides, Andy was pretty much confirming that he was hiring Jack on, right? Jack cleared his throat.

"Uh, can I ask, how much is usual for an undergraduate research assistant to make per hour?"

Andy relaxed a bit at the distraction of logistics. "Student usually start at $7.45 an hour. How many hours a week do you think is reasonable from you, working around your classes?"

Jack was currently holding down seven hours a week at the dining hall, more when he could work overtime. "Ten?"

"Sounds good! If you ever need to cut back or anything, that's fine. You'll be hourly, so it doesn't hurt me," Andy laughed. "Come on, let me show you around."

"Around" turned out to be a quiet, lonely room with one desk and computer, where Jack would be sitting. Still, it was his own space, and in the astronomy building, near to all his classes. Andy wrote down who to see about getting which keys, showed him how the payroll system worked, told him who to see about getting schooled in which aspects of his future work here, and introduced Jack to the other people involved in the brown dwarf project: one other undergraduate student (a senior), and two graduate students. The undergrad, a smiling young woman with curly black hair named Nuncy, had been working with Andy a couple years. The grads-- a bubbly Indian guy, Dheeraj; and an aloof, short woman with curly brown hair, Fae-- took a little time, surprising Jack, to let him know more about the project. Or rather, Dheeraj told him about the project while Fae stood by, her face host to an expression he decided to interpret as a muted smile, though it could have probably been anything. At last, when it'd all grown a bit too tedious for Jack, he made some pitiful excuse about having homework to do and bowed out of the building. Stepping back into the surprising warmth of the early spring sunshine, everything seemed exactly the same as when he'd entered the building, but he'd entered not even sure if he was looking at a real job opening or how this would go, and he'd come out an Undergraduate Research Assistant. A wicked smile spread across his face and, though he really did have more than his share of homework to do tonight. He turned his feet towards the nearest computer lab. Getting home would take twenty, twenty-five minutes, and this just could not wait.

Ennis woke up the next morning and had a class first thing after breakfast. From there he had a one-hour break until his next class, but he figured as lousy as it was to have such little time, he could get something done in one hour. Only when he sat down at his computer and checked his e-mail-- which, if he was honest with himself, had plenty to do with his idea of coming into work for so little time-- did Ennis discover Jack's excitement from the day before. He was sorry he'd been asleep to miss it. He typed a response: short, inadequate, silly from how he saw it, but he couldn't very well not say anything, so... Finally, he tried to turn his attention back to the new code he was writing, just a code to plot the results of his major code. Coding calmed him, made him focus. A man could lose a lot of time at the helm of a program, focusing on its detailedintricacies.

Once Jack was working part-time with the small research group instead of in the stinky dining hall, the semester flew by even faster. He popped in to work (and e-mail with Ennis!) in between classes. Occasionally he managed to suck Ennis into an entire e-mail conversation. He was doing computer programming and learning SQL to boot to get this collaboration-wide internet database thing going. Coding had to be one of Jack's least favorite things. It was about as tedious as you could get, and he spent more than one day scouring his code for a single misspelling. That was torture. Still, it made the time go fast, and you could rack up a lot of legitimate work time that way-- looking for the missing semi-colon. Jack could not see what Ennis saw in this particular thankless task.

Jack's classes were no less thankless, though far more grueling. He often found himself putting off his homework in order to spend more time catching up on his work, and his grades slipped in tandem with that shift in priorities. When he tried to shift back, Jack fell mercilessly behind on his project for the research group. Andy didn't say a word, and didn't even follow Jack's progress much, but Fae seemed to always be... _looming_. It was aggravating, but not excessively so. He'd actually found Fae kind of nice, just somehow socially inept. That hardly made her unique among scientists. She was never mean or disparaging when Jack hadn't made the amount of progress she'd expected, but her innocent check-ins always left Jack feeling inadequate and behind.

When Jack put the question to Ennis in an e-mail, Ennis's answer was that grad schools wouldn't care about a student's grades, they care about research. Jack went back to putting his research first, and dissolved any sense of guilt, shame, or worry over his grades. By the time the end of the semester was rolling around, it was clear those letters had slipped further towards the end of the alphabet from his previous Ennis-less semester, but he shrugged it off. Researchy stuff was good for the mind, soul, and career, so statistical thermodynamics could go fuck itself.

And, suddenly, Jack stepped from the confines of his last tragically-bad final exam of the semester into the full sun of a summer coming into its being at last only to realize that he only had ten days now until Ennis's return. Somehow he'd managed to simply not see that, blinded by exams, all-day study sessions locked in his office or the physics student lounge when it wasn't full of poorly-flirting and clueless straight baby-scientists making a lot of racket. But now... now that was all past. Teng was moving out this week, and then... Jack felt blinded again, but not this time by the dread of finals' week. He was unable to wrap his mind around having Ennis back in his life. It was all just too damned good to be true.

When Teng needed help moving out, Jack called on his physics buds to come and load the stuff into the van Teng had rented. When the time came to get Ennis's meager belongings out of the closets and drawers they were stuffed into to make room for Teng, Jack called, instead, Sara and Dawn. Jack had continued going to Spectrum meetings all semester. Mostly he sat quietly in the back, not participating. He didn't want to go on the AIDS walk. He didn't want to go to their party alone. He didn't want to give up his weekends to them. But a night or two a month to sit and listen to what was up with the club, he could justify. Butmore so, he'd got to be friends with Sara and Dawn.

Sara was, he eventually found out, born in Jamaica. She'd moved tot he U.S. before she'd even turned one, but she still had family there, and she and her mom flew down to Jamaica every summer for a couple weeks. She told stories of bathing with her cousins in a tub of unheated water, of chickens running underfoot. Jack held his tongue, for, the poverty she described so far away in Jamaica was not so different from what he'd grown up with in Wyoming, not so distant at all. They didn't have chickens in their house, no, but couple oftimes his daddy had insisted on using the hot water himself-- said it was a man's privilege for a man's day of work-- and Jack took his share of ice-cold baths growing up. And they sure _had_ chickens. The only thing underfoot in their house was mice, and some barn cats when they got bad enough to bring the cats into the house. Jack remembered waking up once to find a bat circling around the ceiling of his room. The barn cats took care of that rodent, too.

Dawn came out of her shell more and more throughout the semester, and Jack learned more about both of them, just as he told them more about himself. By the time Ennis was days away from arriving and the three of them were sharing pizza-- despite the strong protest Dawn had put up-- around the couch, Jack had learned that Sara was what she called "bisexual", that Jack took to mean she liked sex with anyone. She actually had a boyfriend right now! That surprised Jack, though. "Does he know you're the president of Spectrum."

She giggled and smiled at Jack around her pizza. "Yeees."

"He's ok with that?"

She giggled again, in answer.

"Well, just seems like a lot of guys wouldn't be."

"It's different with girls," Dawn said with indignation. "A lot of guys think two girls together is hot, but guys together is gross." Shebared her large, brown eyes hard at Jack in some kind of challenge.

"Hey, don't look at me," Jack shrugged and took a bite, then continued. "I never really gave two girls together much thought, I guess, but I'll agree with you that two guys together is most definitely not gross. As long as I'm one of them."

This got a laugh from Dawn, and Jack was happy to see her relax a bit.

"And Ennis is the other," Jack finished, softly.

When next Jack looked up, he found the two girls sitting staring at him with warmth in their eyes. "What?"

"It's just really cute," Sara answered.

"What is?"

"You're in love," Dawn grinned and winked, causing Jack to chuckle. "You can't say you're not..." Dawn stared him down again.

"I wouldn't think of it."

"Good," Dawn nodded, then sighed, "But I still have an exam tomorrow."

"Yeah, what in?" Jack asked. Sara tilted her head to catch Dawn's answer as well. "Latin."

Three noses wrinkled. "Shit." "Yuck." "It's stupid, but I better be going."

Dawn stood and saw herself out the door, Sara following behind her since they were friends and lived in the same dorm. Jack waved as they left, and only then did he wonder... Was it going to be the last time he saw them? Would Ennis be ok with those gals in Jack's life? In _Ennis's_ life? Here in their apartment? What about Teng? Only time could tell.


	20. Chapter 20

**Disclaimer:** Not my characters, and I make no money from them.  
**AN:** Unbeta'd, I'm sure there are typos. Oh, and sex ahoy, though not terribly explicit.

Chapter 20

Ennis ran through his mental packing list just under his breath as he loaded his meager belongings into a suitcase and a backpack. He checked under the bed multiple times, crawled far enough into the closet to feel silly, and checked under Ryan's already-vacated bed as well. Leaving when Ryan had already gone was somehow depressing, though he and Ryan had not got along all that well. Still, he felt like he was leaving a part of himself here, like he'd had memories, times he could never relive, and he didn't know if he'd ever see any of these people again.

He'd already said goodbye to his lab mates. They brushed off Ennis's concern easily with a list of the next AAS conference locations and each of their relative probabilities of having enough research done to attend them. Ennis tried now to console himself; he was going to be seeing Jack in, well, twelve hours give or take. Teng had already moved out, so that meant no more lounges, no more phone sex, no more suggestive e-mails. He was going to nail his man to the floor in the middle of the kitchen, if he had any say. Just because he could. He remembered Jack's joke about wallpapering the place in come and smiled. Time for Jack to put his body where his mouth was, huh?

Ennis inhaled, smelled the scent of his room for this one last time. He'd done a lot of leaving places as an orphan. He was used to the places he'd called home becoming nothing but mere memories, and this place hadn't even been that much. It wasn't any home, but just a dorm on the other side of the world from his own warm bed. He didn't look back as he took the suitcase in hand, swung the backpack onto a shoulder, and headed down the cold, linoleum-paved hall towards home.

Jack didn't have a car, and Ennis was flying into Cheyenne. Jack had been determined to be there, no matter what, and, besides, he couldn't stand the idea of Ennis riding a slow bus home when he could be with Jack already. It'd taken some begging, but Jack had finally managed to impose upon Teng, borrowing his ex-roomie's tiny gray VW Sorocco for the journey. He drove with the window open and the radio on, though in th spaces between cities all he could get were crap stations and soft rock. He was feeling good enough, though, that when Mariah Carey sang some breathy duet he didn't bother changing the channel. It sounded like some bad romance movie soundtrack. Hell, for all Jack knew, maybe it _was_ some bad romance movie soundtrack. But then, here he was, driving to embrace his love in an airport after a long European separation, so maybe he was living in that bad romance movie after all. Jack laughed and dealt with the Mariah situation, 'cause it couldn't spoil his mood. Anyway, he reasoned, no one made romance movies about two men, and they never would.

Jack whistled along with the breeze through the window. The car rattled and shook in just about every nook and cranny, and occasionally he would find himself beating on this or that to try and silence it, but nonetheless the goofy smile never left his face, but only grew as he pulled into Cheyenne and down to their tiny airport this warm early-summer day. He wondered what he and Ennis were going to do this summer. The whole world seemed at their fingertips. Jack was committed to working twenty hours a week-- way more than the dining hall would have ever given him-- on the next part of the brown dwarf project. Other than that... they could go on a vacation, laze around inside, or run, hike, camp-- anything they liked. They were free, and Jack sure as hell was not taking any classes this summer. Never again, he had vowed to himself.

The smell of the airport brought the sense of winter rushing back to Jack's brain. His one and only flight away from home in his life had been to see Ennis. Now he wasn't going anywhere, but the airport smelled like that excitement and anticipation regardless. The thing that said stale carpet and sterile cleaners to other fliers, told Jack about possibilities, about the millions of people who'd passed through here and how little they mattered compared to the one, only one, he actually wanted to see.

It took Jack only two minutes to find the gate Ennis's plane from Texas was flying into. Jack didn't even want to imagine being on planes as long as Ennis had been. He'd flown from Germany to New York City-- a place Jack half expected he'd never get to see-- then to Dallas, and from there out here. Well, in theory, anyway. His plane hadn't landed here in Wyoming yet.

Jack slouched down into a leather chair by the gate and stared unseeing at his boots. He hadn't brought anything like a book, and most of the time he was happy to sit and do nothing after so much hard work during the school year. Just now, though, Jack felt like he wanted to get up and pace or something. He stayed as still as possible, simply out of a sensation that pacing would make him look seriously lame, and if anyone could tell he was pacing over a _guy_ coming off the plane, Ennis would have a shit fit.

Twenty minutes must have passed, Jack all the while trying not to wonder what the exact time had been. Didn't matter, 'cause he didn't have a watch and couldn't see a clock, but by now a few other people were milling around the gate. Jack's head snapped up like someone had said his name when the plane pulled up to the gate and people started getting off. He was on his feet without even realizing it, hands buried in his jeans pockets. His tight blue T-shirt stretched across his chest. he'd been letting off some steam at the gym, not that it was unusual for him, but he had half a hope that Ennis would notice, or care, or something. He'd been working harder these past few weeks to not gain weight through finals. Or that's what he'd told himself, though at the current moment, he didn't that that was the whole story.

One by one, people spilled off the plane and were hugged by friends and family, then took off down the single concourse of the small airport, presumably towards the twin luggage carousels. Jack watched the exit of the plane, a futuristic cave mouth, with a sinking in the pit of his stomach. Why--

The question was cut off mid-thought as the lanky and troubled looking young man exited that cave, worrying at some piece of paper in is hands. The change in lighting seemed to alert him to the open airport around him, and he tucked the paper into a back pocket under his backpack before squinting down the hallway towards the concourse exit. He hadn't seen Jack. In fact, he didn't even know Jack was going to be here. He was supposed to take a bus, and likely had been studying the schedule even now. Ennis took a couple steps more forward before he finally looked in front of him towards Jack, hands now hanging greedily at his side. Ennis froze.

The moment hung in time for a second as more families chatted around them and headed down the concourse. When the stillness finally broke, it was Ennis's mouth that broke it, rising in a full smile the likes of which even Jack had rarely ever seen. Jack wondered if even his answering smile was as good. He advanced towards Ennis while Ennis continued advancing towards him, eyes averted and cheeks rose-red from a gentle blush.

"What're you doin' here, huh?" Ennis spoke so softly that Jack had to lean in to hear him.

Jack didn't answer, but reached out and wrapped one hand around Ennis's slender-and-strong shoulder. With that contact, that proof of the reality of this situation, they seemed together to shit into a different mode entirely as Jack flung his arms as quickly about Ennis as he could, and felt the answering slap of Ennis's arms hitting his own back. "Sonofabitch," Jack hissed under his breath.

When they were done hugging, Ennis came up with a smaller, but more playful, smile. Ennis's eyes played back and forth along the concourse for a second, and then he pushed Jack the seven or so paces into the men's room. They had hardly hit the doorway of that place before Ennis pulled Jack tight against the inner wall and, holding Jack's head still as if Jack might ever try to escape, Ennis kissed Jack hard enough that Jack saw stars. Barely able to draw breath, Jake heaved against Ennis. When they broke for air, Ennis seemed to calm, but Jack was just lighting on fire, just coming to believe the situation he'd found himself in. He flung Ennis against the facing wall of the small hallway leading into the men's room proper, Jack not sparing a thought for the contents of Ennis's backpack. They held each other there, with their whole bodies, mouths included but not alone.

Ennis, though, seemed to come back to the ground at the sound of a flush from the stalls behind them. He leaned in toward Jack and whispered, just one thing that Jack would treasure for always, before Ennis walked up to a urinal and unzipped.

Jack felt a little lame for not realizing that Ennis must have to pee, plane-hopping as he had been all day. Jack leaned against the wall and watched Ennis's, back unapologetically. The way he was feeling, he felt rather like he was never going to let Ennis out of his sight again. A man came out of a stall and washed his hands, and in all that time, Ennis hadn't not started a stream of piss. Jack had a coy smile on his face. No kidding, Ennis was hard. Still hard, from the sound of it. when the man left, Jack came up behind Ennis and clapped him on the shoulder.

"Are you planning on standing here all day? 'Cause I was hoping to get home."

Ennis managed to both smile and growl at the same time, and Jack shook his head and stepped away once more before Ennis finally began to relieve himself. Thank fuck, 'cause they could not get home fast enough for Jack.

They left the bathroom walking next to each other, close enough that their arms brushed, and neither pulled away. When the concourse seemed deserted around them, they even snatched each other's hands in passing, small enough to seem like a mistake maybe, or so Jack justified it, though he didn't really believe anyone could mistake it. Ennis could not possibly be thinking straight, but Jack was not about to blame him because for sure he wasn't thinking half straight himself. And he didn't have any jet lag.

They did manage to stand side-by-side without touching for the moments it took to find Ennis's single suitcase at the luggage claim. They'd missed its first trip around because they were sneaking peaks at each other instead. Jack wondered when Mariah Carey was going to start playing over the speakers here. Jack hauled Ennis's suitcase out to the car, and Ennis didn't protest. Jack took that as a sign of fatigue. Ennis claimed to not be hungry or thirsty, didn't even inquire as to where the car had come from, and dropped into the passenger seat heavily. He slept most of the way back to Laramie, and Jack let him. Ennis would need to be pretty rested up for what Jack had in mind once they got home.

The apartment fit like a glove. The smell was familiar cleaning products that he'd bought himself, Jack, and Jack's dirty dishes. "I know you didn't clean this place," Ennis muttered with a smile.

"I might a had some help..." Jack was dragging Ennis's large suitcase to the bedroom already.

"Whose car was that?" Ennis felt his brows wrinkle. He felt like he was just waking up from some sort of sleep. Well, besides the actual sleep he had just woken up from.

"Teng. Took some sweet talking."

"You better not be sweet talking Teng." Ennis was unhappy to see that Jack had to pop his head out of the bedroom to make sure Ennis was joking.

"I got a couple girlfriends to help me with the cleaning."

"If you've got girlfriends, I think we need to--"

"Jack held up his hand and went to the fridge, withdrawing with a beer. "If you are going to keep making those stupid jokes, I _will_ drive you back to the airport."

Ennis laughed. "So, what are you know, one of those gay guys who goes around with gals?"

Jack turned to look at Ennis, unsmiling. "If having friends who are chicks makes me into that, then whatever."

Ennis immediately saw his mistake. He stepped towards the sexy, strapping man across from him. "Aww, come on Jack, I didn't mean anything by it. Just trying to make a joke."

The corner of Jack's mouth came up and he snorted. "Trying, huh? I think even _that's_ generous."

"Asshole." Ennis took another step towards Jack. Jack was between him and the bedroom, and whenever he stepped forward, Jack stepped back. Ennis had no idea if Jack was aware of this or not.

"You been working out or something?" Ennis squinted his eyes at the tight shirt stretched across Jack's chest. He recalled the shirt. It wasn't new, but it sure hadn't fit like that before. It was still loose at Jack's waist, but across his shoulders...

"I've gotta do something to keep in shape since you've been depriving me of my _favorite_ exercise."

"Yeah?" Ennis stepped forwards.

"Yeah." Jack stepped back. It was like some sort of dangerous dance, but Ennis was hardening, knowing that Jack knew what was going on as well as he did. Some kind of foreplay that Ennis had no experience with, that's what this was. He couldn't imagine a girl having this conversation anyway.

"I remember you were thinking of making some decorating changes? Looks like you haven't done them yet."

Jack's face was blank and he registered nothing for a good few moments, but the second he did recall the conversation Ennis was referencing, Ennis could see it in his eyes. The blue sparks became huge embers. "What, uh, room... did you want to start in."

Yes, Ennis had the upper hand again. Felt good. he didn't know when this had become a competition, but he thought the steps-towards-the-room thing had been Jack's secret doing, and he'd thrown Jack off his plan and off his game. He liked Jack off his game just 'cause Ennis didn't like to feel like he was part of a game at all.

"The room doesn't matter to me, we've got to do them all, right?"

Jack recovered his smile and his balance, took a few strong steps forward and met Ennis at the edge of the kitchen, and unbuckled and pulled down Ennis's pants, all so quickly Ennis could hardly get a handle on what was going on. Jack dropped to his knees while Ennis protested. "Was... It was you who was going to, uh... wallpaper--"

Jack took him in and didn't stop to argue the particulars of a phone tease held months ago. Ennis had no choice but to drop the subject as his brain and tongue first stopped communicating with each other, and then his brain stopped functioning altogether. He came so soon, too soon, into Jack's mouth.

"Jack!" He struggled to catch his breath. "I meant to... I was meaning to..."

"It's ok," Jack stood and rested a hand on Ennis's shoulder. "We've got all summer."

That wasn't good enough for Ennis, and he let Jack know by pulling Jack's shirt off to see those muscles underneath. Ennis moved his hands over the familiar planes, too recently spent to be ready again but aware that it wouldn't take long. Ennis leaned forward and placed a warm, gentle, living kiss on Jack's startled lips.

"Could be," he answered. "Hope we'll have more than just the summer, Jack."

Jack smiled and wrapped Ennis up in his arms. Ennis folded his arms around Jack in turn and whispered close to Jack's ear.

"It doesn't change that I want to enjoy the time we have now."

Jack stroked the mussed hair above Ennis's ear. "I love you."

"Mmm, love you more." Ennis breathed a kiss into Jack's neck. Jack seemed to rock them to his own tuneless dance, though not for long. Ennis came surging back with his own ideas, proving that jet lag meets its match in lust. They both passed out just before dawn, and didn't get out of bed the entire next day. By the day after, Teng was hot on the tail of his ride and Jack had to beg forgiveness, but Ennis guessed that Jack's apology was a lie. The smile he gave Ennis as he pleaded with Teng on the phone said that Jack was anything but sorry. Ennis blushed and went to do laundry. Home wasn't all about sex. Not that it was about laundry either. It was just about being, being in a place where you didn't have to try. Ennis hadn't realized how much he'd missed it until he had it back.


	21. Chapter 21

**Disclaimer:** Not my characters, and I make no money from them.  
**AN:** This is likely to be the last chapter for a little bit. Thanks to **elena62** for helping me with a couple errors!

Chapter 21

"Yeah, but that's not what he said," Jack grunted up at Ennis, staring through the metal bar, as he lifted the weight. Ennis leaned forward to spot, but Jack didn't need it, not at a hundred and fifty pounds. Ennis found himself frowning. The 'little bit' Jack claimed to have worked out was clearly an underestimate. Jack didn't even seem to be exerting himself.

"He said it was a team-building year."

"Bull shit." Jack placed the bar back on its holder and looked up into Ennis's eyes. Ennis met Jack's gaze head-on. "He said he's got the best recruits."

"For team-building," Ennis muttered as he took his place lying on the bench, still warm from Jack's imprint.

Jack took up the spotter's position overhead. "He said that last year."

"You ever think maybe it takes more than one year to build a team?"

"Well shit, Ennis, this is college. The players have only _got_ four. Sappo needs to get off his ass and build while he wins."

Ennis grunted a laugh and hefted the bar into the air, bringing it down to his chest. Jack watched him, silent for once. Five reps in, Ennis hung the bar back up. "How high are you going?" he asked Jack.

"Well, I maxed two twenty-five when I was here with Jason, so I guess maybe up to one-ninety or something."

"Shit."

"What?" Jack stepped closer, well into Ennis's personal space as he stood up. "Are you a weakling, don't think you can handle it?"

Ennis caught the joke with an underplayed smile. "Anyway, it isn't about lifting weights. That thing," Ennis motioned towards the laden bar, "and a moving person aren't near the same."

A wolfish grin came across Jack's face. "Is that a challenge?"

"If you want to take it as one." Ennis wiped his hands with the small towel he held and stepped back, leaving the bench open for Jack.

"In that case, maybe we better call it quits now, before I'm too tired."

"Suit yourself," Ennis shrugged. "You got the muscle but not the endurance, huh hotshot?"

Jack's only answer was a playful whip at Ennis with his own towel before he went to unrack the weights.

The two of them had been going at it nearly non-stop. Just now, they both worked mid-days in their respective labs on opposite sides of the same building. The e-mails continued, but with less frequency and urgency, and the topic was more likely meeting for lunch than anything else. They cut out early some days, came in late on others. If there were such a place as heaven, maybe it was the days they dozed under the oaks near the physics building, or the mornings they awoke to a slow and lazy fuck.

One day, only two weeks into this post-homecoming routine, they took their home-brought lunches beneath and oak tree and stretched out in the cool grass at the edge where the shade started breaking into fragments of sunlight, moving with the wind. Jack ate first and lay on his back. Ennis was trying not to look at the arc of hip bone escaping from Jack's jeans, just above their loose hang. Jack caught him, but continued on with the conversation he was effortlessly holding nonetheless. When Ennis finished eating, he lay his heated forehead down against the chill blades of the green, perfectly kept grass-- kept with the money of poor students.

Next Ennis knew, he was blinking himself awake. A heavy weight pressed onto his back, and he stirred, confused as to where he was (though he seemed to know on instinct that the weight was Jack. A breeze raised goosebumps on Ennis's exposed back, and that was the only reason he even knew that his back _was_ exposed. Blinking up again as his eyes adjusted to the light, Ennis caught a couple drifting gazes landing on him-- landing on him and Jack. The expressions were mixed, but most people looked away either way.

Fuck! Only then did Ennis jerk abruptly to full-wakefulness and roll away from Jack. Jack had been sprawled across Ennis's back, his cheek pressed to Ennis's skin, with Ennis's shirt otherwise pulled up under his own armpits. Jack started awake when his head and body hit the grass. "Wha?"

Ennis didn't answer. He knew that Jack had so little belief in him these days, and though people had seen them, nothing seemed to have come of it. Everything had been so beautiful up until now... Ennis reined in his fear as hard as he could.

"What's going on?" Jack asked, pulling himself to sitting and shaking out an arm. Ennis figured it must be asleep.

"Uh." Ennis ran a hand through his usually unruly hair, sparing a thought for the idea of a haircut. When he'd met Jack, his head had been nearly shaved clean, though he'd had some facial hair at the time. Maybe that was something to go back to, get as far away from the mad scientist appearance as possible. Not that it could change who he was or what he studied. "Nothing," Ennis answered. "Figure we best be getting back to work."

"Oh. Huh. Yeah." Jack sighed and stood with marked lack of enthusiasm about this idea. Still, Ennis had stuff to do, a meeting with his boss the day after tomorrow, so Jack could wait. It wasn't as if they wouldn't see each other later. Without thinking or realizing what he was doing, Ennis leaned over and dropped a quick kiss on Jack's cheek before he hurried into the building. He was halfway up the stairs before he realized he'd done that in front of the whole goddamn world.

"Uh uh. No no no. What?"

"Swear it," Dawn nodded and poked at her takeout container from the dining hall with her plastic fork.

"And you wanted me to get advice from this guy?"

Sara sighed. "Chris and Landon have been together for a while." She shrugged.

"Not long enough, I guess," Jack answered, leaning over to turn on his PlayStation. Sara gestured for a controller. Dawn waved Jack off, content with her food.

They talked about the Spectrum picnic while they played a first-person shooter. Sara explained her lofty plans at the same time that Jack tried to think of any way he could to make them more... base.

"I was going to order a chocolate cake."

"Probably save... work to just... make one. Have a guy pop out of it. Oh! Shit! There, where the hell are you?"

Sara laughed. "And what about for the girls?"

"That's why... fuck!... why we've got you."

Sara chuckled again.

"You're getting better at this," Jack hissed.

"Sara, he's coming from the right. See your map?"

"I see!" Sara squealed at Dawn.

"Alright, just help--"

The rest of Dawn's sentence was cut off by the door to the apartment swinging open. Ennis's told Jack he was going to work a little late today since he had an early morning meeting with the advisor-dude. He was back well before Jack had expected him. Jack paused the game and dropped his controller onto the coffee table, jumping to his feet.

"Uh, Ennis. This is Sara and Dawn, you 'member I told you about them?"

Ennis seemed to pause inside the doorway, and Jack could guess he wasn't so happy at being surprised like this in his own place, but Jack hadn't expected him back yet... and really, he wasn't planning on throwing the girls out regardless just for Ennis.

"You... you gals don't go home for the summer?" It was a hell of a stupid welcome, and Jack glared at Ennis as if to tell him so.

Dawn plopped her food down on the coffee table and turned to sit on her knees on the couch, resting her chin on her hands on the sofa-back. Her large eyes surveyed Ennis. Sara only half-turned, looking-- surprisingly-- far more threatened than Dawn did by Ennis's less-than-charming question. Dawn blinked widely, expressionless in the way Jack already knew to be the shy girl's hidden trickster shining through. Only when she was in a playful mood did Dawn cover up that she was in any mood at all.

Dawn finally answered, although Jack got the impression it was more because she was eager to see Ennis's reaction. "My dads live in Laramie."

Ennis jerked back a little.

"And my boyfriend has an apartment here. I'm staying with him this summer," Sara answered.

Ennis nodded. The room seemed unnaturally quiet to Jack. "Well," Ennis offered a hand, "I'm Jack's roommate, Ennis."

Sara giggled. "Right."

Dawn turned back to her food before Ennis got to offer her a hand in greeting. Nonchalant, she lifted her fork towards the TV. "We know who you are, Ennis." She turned her head upside-down to see him. "Nice to meet you, though. Jack talks about you non-stop."

"Hey, that is an exaggeration, I do not--"

"No," Sara answered, "Jack talks about naked guys and booze and PlayStation non-stop."

Even Ennis laughed at this, Jack was glad to see.

"Yeah, but," said Dawn, "that's all a cover because he doesn't want us to know how mushy-wushy in love he is. Which is pointless anyway 'cause we already know." She popped a bite of what looked like it might have been lasagna into her mouth.

"Jack," Sara called back over her shoulder, "are we going to finish this game, or are you just going to admit I'm awesome and you suck?"

"Mmm, I like these girls," Ennis laughed over at Jack.

"Haha," flat and sarcastic, Jack made a mockery of the fact that everyone was laughing at him.

Ennis more quietly told Jack that he was headed for the shower, and Jack stretched back out on the loveseat to finish losing to Sara at a very masculine video game. He thought he should feel insecure and torn down, but it had been too fun, and he had been through enough by now to know that it wasn't winning or losing a video game that made you a man or a woman.

"A picnic?" Ennis squinted up across take-out Chinese.

"They have it every year. Come on, no one will think it's strange that you're there."

"I don't know, Jack." Ennis shook his head and focused on the table in front of him.

"Yeah, I get it," Jack sighed.

They finished their meal in silence.

Summer was fully-arrived and the warm sun was streaming down from the sky when Jack, too proud to care what Ennis had to say about this event, showed up at the little park on the north-eastern bank of the Laramie River. He hauled two heavy-laden grocery bags of soda out of the back of Teng's car, bribed and borrowed again. Jack was going to have to think of something to do for Teng in return for all that Teng had done-- was doing-- for him. He was also probably going to have to consider getting a car of his own, or maybe he and Ennis could split one. A family car. The idea was both terrifying and heartwarming.

He wrapped the plastic grocery bags around his wrists and hefted a watermelon in his hands before kicking the door shut and lumbering down the paved path towards the picnic tables. The plastic cut into his wrists, but overall he was ok with the weight. It made him feel good, made him feel more masculine and less... less _gay_ to work on his muscles. Jack shoved the thought aside to worry about or not some other day.

"Heeey! Man!" Chris came up and slipped the watermelon away.

A girl named Mandy started unburdening Jack of his sodas. Her girlfriend, Serene, was helping Mandy put all the food out.

"Isn't Ennis coming?' Jack turned to see Paul at his elbow.

"Huh? Oh no, he can't make it," Jack brushed off the question. He was worried that folks would think less of him if Ennis didn't want to meet them, wasn't as open as all of them were. It was a big enough deal to Jack that he'd managed to come here today without causing a fight. Paul nodded and went off talking about something else. Abortion laws were a big deal right now, with some grumblings in the state government, but Jack had never been interested. Wasn't like it had the least to do with him. Eventually, though, a couple more people joined in the conversation and it steered around to the World Cup. Jack had never liked soccer, and no one here did either except a couple of the gals, but the discussion got heated when they came to the old soccer versus football debate and why the rest of the world would give a damn about kicking some ball around. Serene loudly protested that football was barbaric and foolish, and she lost instant credibility among the guys. About that time the hot dogs and burgers were ready, sufficiently distracting them all from the argument. Afterwards, Jack and the guys and one girl-- Melissa-- hit the court for some four-on-four.

Game concluded, Jack was walked off the court joshing with Chris about how Chris's team-- skins (mostly because it wasn't the team Melissa was on)-- had got their asses handed to them on a platter by a team with a girl on it. Melissa spun around, her long black braid flying behind her. "You better shut up, Jack. I can kick your ass in basketball, or out."

"She's totally on the women's team, yo," Chris jutted his nose up in the air. "I wouldn't expect to beat her."

"Don't say yo like that; you sound gay," Jack shot back.

Chris laughed sharp and pretended to hump the air in front of him, grunting and calling, "You have no idea!"

"Jesus," Jack muttered. He sat down at the picnic table to rest, Dawn leaning close up beside him to hand him a bottle of water before sitting opposite him. He thanked her and drank deep.

That was one thing he noticed about being around Spectrum folks. The guys were no more or less physical with each other than guys in classes, than guys every day, but the girls-- They were always brushing, touching, leaning, hugging the guys. The physics and astronomy chicks Jack was friends with wouldn't do _anything_ like that. Was it something peculiar about physics girls, or was it the Spectrum girls? Jack didn't know enough other girls to compare. Well, back in his single days he'd met plenty of girls who were brushing and leaning, but they'd clearly had motives. Obviously all the guys here were off the girls' market, so none of the touching could be for that same reason. Maybe it was just _because_ the guys weren't on the market. Jack did notice that girls tended to hug each other and stuff. Maybe they liked to touch people, and this was the only place where they could include guys in that without the fear of being goosed. Jack smiled around the lip of his water bottle, imagining goosing these girls just for fun, to keep them on their toes.

Everyone was splitting the chocolate cake Sara had spent too much club money on, in Jack's opinion, when Dawn's eyes darted up and opened wide-- a hard gesture to miss, big as they were. A hush floated over the table, though it was mostly Dawn's side. Sara turned and smiled her brightest smile, one Jack had come to think of as her 'real' smile among all the others she gave, and chirped, "Hi Ennis."

The remaining conversations stopped abruptly, and all eyes turned to the place behind Jack. He spun around.

"I, uh, brought these. Hope... hope there's still room in your all's stomachs." Ennis was giving the chocolate cake a confrontational stare as he set down a bag of popsicles on the picnic table.

"Where'd you come from?" Jack asked, still shocked.

"Sage," Ennis answered matter-of-factly. "You gonna... can I sit down?"

A bunch of murmurings ran around the table as people scooted specifically so Ennis could have a spot next to Jack. Jack hoped Ennis saw that this was the kind of subtle thing that would only happen with this group, that it was the main difference between this group and any other, and nothing else.

Chris laughed. "I thought you made him up!" Sara giggled. Someone cut Ennis a piece of cake and slid it to him, and a cup of lemonade magically appeared in his hand.

"I don't know," Melissa continued speaking to Prashant, Matty's flavor-of-the-month. "We don't hang with the guys much, but I've heard it's going to be another team-building season."

"Bull shit," Jack shot back. "Team-building is keyword for 'we don't expect to do crap this year'."

Melissa shrugged. "I mean, it's fine... but I thought last year was a team-building season..."

"It was," Ennis mumbled around a bite of cake.

"At some point you've got to stop team-building and start team-playing," Prashant nodded.

"There you go," Jack waved at Prashant. "That's what I've been trying to say all along."

"Well," Melissa smiled up from regarding her cup of soda, "maybe this year's the year, then."

"I'll drink to that." Jack raised his water bottle and she her plastic cup. The clapped them together, Ennis and Prashant scrambling behind to be included.

"Be nice to see a championship," Ennis nodded.

"Maybe someone forgot to tell you, Ennis," Dawn answered in her deadpan humor, "but we're a football school."


End file.
